Report of the President

This is my last President's letter prior to turning over the gavel (both literally and figuratively) to Mark Beasley this August in San Francisco. Before we turn to the traditional announcements, I wish to pay respects to one of our accounting colleagues and a past Section President, Barry Cushing, who we recently lost to cancer. Many of you contacted me afterward to express your sympathy and sadness. Rich Houston has put together a touching tribute within this report that I am sure you will enjoy reading. I only hope that Barry knew just how many lives he touched.

Next, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have served the Section during this past year. The level of work we do is amazing and the accomplishments are even more so. I owe so many a great deal of gratitude and would like to extend my thanks for who you are and for all that you do. I also would like to offer a very special "I couldn't do it without you" to all of the Committees and Committee Chairs who selfishly volunteer their time and efforts on our behalf. I would like to personally acknowledge and thank those of you work tirelessly behind the scenes. While there are so many folks deserving of recognition, I would like to single out a few who really put forth considerable effort and receive so little public recognition: my sincere thanks to Rich Houston (The Auditors' Report) and Glen Gray (web master) who each have served for many and who never receive sufficient praise. This is Rich's last year as editor, and he has groomed Jim Bierstaker this year to take over. The Section is a better organization because of all of you and I appreciate everything you do to help achieve our Section's goals.

Now to the announcements! The planning for our next MYC is already underway. Building on the great success of the 2005 Midyear Conference in New Orleans, our 2006 Midyear Conference planning committee, chaired by Mark DeFond (University of Southern California) and Todd DeZoort (University of Alabama), is hard at work putting together an outstanding program for the 12th Annual Auditing Section Midyear Conference to be held January 12-14, 2006. We are pleased to report that the meeting site is the Hilton Universal City Hotel at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California.

We are especially excited to announce that this meeting will be held jointly with the American Accounting Association's International Section. Our format will be similar to prior Midyear conferences, but the joint meeting will allow us the opportunity to host combined plenary sessions focusing on international issues affecting audit and assurance issues. While we will maintain the same number of concurrent research and education sessions that focus on auditing and assurance issues, our members also will be able to attend concurrent sessions hosted by the International Section. We are confident that this joint meeting will facilitate fruitful dialogue between members of both sections. You are encouraged to contribute to the conference through submissions of auditing/attestation/assurance research and education papers, teaching cases, and special session proposals. The deadline is September 1, 2005. Mark DeFond and Todd DeZoort have also put out a call for reviewers, discussants, and/or moderators for our concurrent sessions. Please volunteer and help make this another outstanding program. (Formal announcements and volunteer forms appear elsewhere in this report.) We look forward to seeing you at Universal City next January.

The Section is engaged in many activities and I would like to highlight just a few. Jay Rich (Research Committee Chair) and Roger Martin (chair of the Auditing Standards Committee) and their committees are working jointly and closely with the PCAOB, responding to the PCAOB's call for a synthesis of research on their "hot topics" – fair-value auditing and risk assessment. These are important and timely projects that provide us opportunities to interface with practice. Thank you Jay and Roger, for helping fulfill one of the missions of our Section.

Our Education Committee, chaired by Eric Johnson, continues with its project to assess the feasibility of an online journal. The Committee actively seeks your input as this will be "a go" only to the extent to which it is seen as a benefit to our members. I encourage anyone with an interest in this new outlet to contact Eric.

The Membership and Regional Coordinators Committee (Chaired by Julia Higgs of Florida Atlantic University) is focusing its efforts on three goals: (1) increasing and maintaining membership; (2) supporting the auditing component of the regional meetings, and (3) offering suggestions to the section for ways the section can add value to its members. As reported at our New Orleans business meeting, this Committee's efforts resulting in adding 54 new members. This is significant in light of the decreasing enrollments at the AAA level. The regional coordinators worked with the sponsors of the regional meetings to help organize panel sessions on auditing topics, coordinate reviews for auditing papers, and identify discussants for auditing papers. My thanks to all of the regional coordinators who helped put together this year's programs.

Something new for the Auditors' Report… Mark Taylor has provided us with an exciting feature: a searchable index for current and past issues! Given many of the feature articles, references to standards and new research, I believe this will prove to be a very useful tool. The search tool is now on the newsletter page at: http://aaahq.org/audit/auditorsreport.htm Thank you Mark!!

I would like to highlight the upcoming AAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco. This should be a wonderful location, so I hope to see record numbers of Auditing Section members there. In addition to the great general program planned by the Annual Meeting Committee at the AAA level (chaired by a past Auditing Section President, Joe Carcello (University of Tennessee), there is a great lineup of activities of importance to the Auditing Section. For example, on Sunday evening, there is a new "welcome" dinner. The dinner speaker will be the Honorable Michael G. Oxley, member of the United States House of Representatives. This is one individual I am fairly certain needs no introduction! I encourage everyone to attend. You may sign up for the dinner on your AAA registration form. The speaker for our traditional Auditing Section Monday noon luncheon will be Don Nicolaisen, Chief Accountant of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Mr. Nicolaisen became Chief Accountant on September 30, 2003, and is responsible for formulating and administering the accounting program and policies of the Commission. Prior to joining the SEC, he was a senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), beginning his accounting career in 1967. Mr. Nicolaisen also was Price Waterhouse's representative on the FASB's Emerging Issues Task Force (1988-1994). I am sure his inside perspective on his important role, and the implications of the current environment on education, research, and audit practice, should be enlightening.

In addition, the Auditing Section's Annual Meeting Coordinator, Bryan Church (Georgia Tech), and his supporting cast of reviewers, have worked very hard to put together a great program of auditing-related research and panel sessions. Bryan received 119 paper submissions, of which 91 were accepted (63 for traditional concurrent paper presentation sessions, six for new scholar concurrent sessions, and 22 for the Research Forum). Compared with last year's meeting in Orlando, the Auditing Section has seven more traditional concurrent paper sessions in San Francisco. There also will be a panel session on "State of the Art in Auditing Research." The panelists include Mark DeFond, Jere Francis, Bill Kinney, Mark Nelson, and Hun-Tong Tan, and the session will be moderated by Bill Messier. Finally, this year's Annual Meeting (under the Presidency of Jane Mutchler) marks the first in which new scholar concurrent sessions will be conducted. The sessions are designed to facilitate the development of junior researchers by pairing them with two senior researchers, who will critique and discuss the junior researcher's paper. Six distinguished auditing researchers are participating: Paul Chaney, Mike Ettredge, Debra Jeter, Mike Stein, Rick Tubbs, and Arnie Wright. My thanks to Bryan Church and to all others who helped put the Annual Meeting program together.

A very special thanks is due to Bill Messier for his service as editor of AJPT. This is a selfless task – and a vital one – and I would like to express my personal thanks as well as sincere gratitude on behalf of the Section members for his three years of service. Beginning in mid-May, all submissions to AJPT should be sent to our incoming editor, Dan Simunic (University of British Columbia). A separate announcement related to the transition period appears elsewhere in the report. We are indeed fortunate to have such qualified individuals willing to take on this critical role!

Also, my sincere thanks go to the members of this year's Executive Committee: Jean C. Bedard (Past President), Mark Beasley (Vice President–Academic), Scott Showalter (Vice President–Practice), Jeff Cohen (Treasurer), Kay Tatum (Secretary), and Karen Pincus (Historian). This is an outstanding group of committed, caring individuals; it has been a great honor to work with each of you. I will miss your presence on the Executive Committee this coming year! Please join me in recognizing Jean, Jeff, and Karen whose terms are ending, at the Auditing Section Luncheon in San Francisco, for their outstanding service. And then let's extend congratulations to and welcome our newly elected officers: Ray Whittingham (incoming VP-Academic), Kathryn Kadous (incoming Treasurer), and Arnie Wright (Historian). No, Arnie, this does not mean you qualify for senior discounts. Welcome aboard. I know you will enjoy serving the Section as much as Jean, Jeff, and Karen have.

Finally, please be looking for upcoming Section announcements regarding officer nominations and awards for 2006. The deadline for nominations for all of these is July 1. I wish to encourage your participation in the nomination processes. There are many deserving individuals and it only takes a minute to submit a name!

On that note, I will close this letter. The next issue of The Auditor's Report will feature the initial comments of Mark Beasley (North Carolina State University), the incoming President. I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to serve the Section, and look forward to working with the Executive Committee in 2005-2006 on many of the initiatives begun and in progress this year. Thank you again for all of the support and suggestions over the year. I hope each of you have a productive and (perhaps more importantly) a relaxing summer!