Report of the President

As those of you that attended the 2010 Auditing Section Mid-Year Conference and Doctoral Consortium in San Diego already know, we had another great conference thanks to the program co-chairs Jennifer Joe and Susan Shu. In addition to two excellent plenary sessions, one by Christopher Cox the past Chairman of the SEC and the other by Dr. Arnold Schilder, Chair of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board, there were 45 papers presented and 5 panel sessions. The attendance of 287 matched our attendance in 2009.

Brian Mayhew, with the assistance of Kathryn Kadous, delivered an outstanding doctorial consortium to 62 doctorial students from 39 universities. The theme of this year’s program was “Good Science in Auditing” and presentations and interactions with 12 leading audit researchers. For some 60 of us that had finished their doctoral studies some time ago, we had an excellent pre-conference workshop on Equipping Audit Students to Make Professional Judgments. This preconference workshop was coordinated by Mark Peecher.

The section owes a great deal of thanks to Jennifer, Susan, Brian, Kathryn, and Mark as well as the many reviewers, presenters, and session moderators whose efforts made our event so successful. The section and all of its members also owes a great deal of thanks to KPMG and the KPMG Foundation for the significant financial support they give which makes our Mid-Year Meetings and the Doctoral Consortium possible.

Officer Election
The final phase of officer elections has been completed using our new election process. The new officers are

D. Scott Showalter, Professor of Practice, North Carolina State University - VP Academic
Walton Conn, Global Head of Audit Methodology and Implementation, KPMG LLP - VP Practice
Jennifer Joe, Associate Professor of Accountancy, Georgia State University - Secretary

Audit Boot Camp
The Second Audit Educator’s Bootcamp will be held  June 15-17 at DePaul University.  The Bootcamp will begin on Tuesday, June 15 at 9:00 AM and conclude on Thursday, June 17, at 4:00 PM. Last year’s Bootcamp received rave reviews from the participants. This year Jay Rich, Ray Whittington and the other members of the Education Committee, along with the session leaders, have worked to even further improve the event. If last year is any indication, the camp will fill fast so be sure and get your registrations in.

Updated Section Operating Manual
At the January meeting of the Section’s Executive Committee a new Operating Manual was approved. The Operating Manual has been periodically updated (the last in 2005) but it had not undergone a though review in over a decade. Special thanks to Audrey Gramling for undertaking this effort. I encourage all section members and especially committee members to take a look at the Manual – it contains valuable information regarding the policies and procedures underlying all of the section’s activities. The new Operating Manual is available at the section website HERE

Webinars
During spring 2009 the Section explored the possibility of providing webinars to Section members. Two webinars were conducted. The first was conducted by Mark Beasley, who spoke on COSO’s Project on Monitoring Internal Controls; the second was by Joe Carcello who discussed his recent PCAOB activity from his perspective as a member of the PCAOB’s Standing Advisory Group.

The section has now received approval from NASBA to award CPE credit for all future webinars delivered by the section. Since the last Auditors’ Report, the section has conducted two Webinars. The first webinar for which CPE was available was conducted this fall by Pamela R. Murphy on Research and Teaching Opportunities on Fraud Prevention and Detection. In March, Kathy Hurtt presented a webinar on Professional Skepticism. The plan going forward is to conduct five to six webinars per year. If you have an interest in conducting one of these webinars contact Susan B. Hughes, chair of the CPE committee, shughes@uvm.edu or Jeffrey Cohen, chair of the Research Committee, cohen@bc.edu.

The webinars are available at the Audit Section’s Home Page on the AAA Commons.

Strategic Plan for the Section
As a final note, the Executive Committee, in conjunctions with support from AAA, has begun a formal strategic planning process. We are in the very early stages but hope to complete the process by the fall. We will be calling on many of you for input and in some cases to participate in the process. The goal is to produce an intermediate and long term plan that will assist the various officers, committee chairs and committee members in making their work more focused and their efforts more sustainable given the high turnover inherent in a volunteer organization.