Report of the President

It is an honor and a pleasure to serve the Auditing Section and to see first-hand the dedication, talent, and success of our members. The Section has a history of innovation and is committed to continuing the tradition of high-quality service to its membership. We have a number of initiatives in progress, including our Strategic Planning process. This effort builds upon our solid foundation and success by formulating a strategy that looks out 5 years, establishing a clear path for our continued success. By formulating a clear vision, mission, and set of high-priority initiatives, our volunteer leadership will be more effective at serving section membership going forward.

The Strategic Planning Committee has made significant progress and we would like to thank them for many hours of analysis, insightful input, and discussion over the past year. If you were at the Midyear Conference last January, you know we took some time Friday after lunch to gather membership feedback and suggestions on our Strategic Planning Roadmap. We received very insightful comments, which will be incorporated into our plan. We also appreciate those of you who volunteered to join one of the Strategic Initiative Teams and several of you are already involved and helping move those initiatives forward.

2011 Midyear Conference, Doctoral Consortium, and Audit Education Workshop
The Midyear Conference in Albuquerque was a great success and set a new attendance record. We express our gratitude to the Conference Planning Committee for organizing a great program. The Committee Co-Chairs were Mike Wilkins and Scott Vandervelde. Mike and Scott were assisted by Joe Brazel and Keith Jones, who will Co-Chair the 2012 Midyear Conference. We also appreciate all of you who served as panel members, presenters, moderators, discussants, and reviewers for the conference. Next year's Midyear Conference will be in Savannah, Georgia, January 12-14, 2012.

Immediately prior to the Midyear Conference the Auditing Section hosted a Doctoral Consortium and Audit Education Workshop. Both were well attended and very successful. The purpose of the Doctoral Consortium is to stimulate students' research by exposing them to the latest ideas from leading researchers in auditing, and by providing opportunities for networking with other Ph.D. students, established auditing researchers, and journal editors. We would like to thank Kathryn Kadous who served as the Doctoral Consortium Coordinator and Jean Bédard who served as the Vice-Coordinator.

The Audit Education Workshop focused on how to model and teach integrity in the classroom. We express appreciation to Jack Krogstad and Gerald Smith who served as Co-Coordinators of the Audit Education Workshop; as well as IDEA – Data Analysis Software for sponsoring the workshop.

The Section is most appreciative to the continued generous support of the KPMG Foundation for their generous financial support of our Midyear Conference and the Doctoral Consortium. Thank you KPMG Foundation!

New Officers
The results of our elections are in and the new officers who will join the Executive Committee in August are:

• Roger Martin, University of Virginia, VP Academic
  (President Elect)
  
  
• Karla Johnstone, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  (Treasurer)

We appreciate Karla's and Roger's willingness to serve in these capacities.

Audit Educator's Bootcamp
The third Audit Educator's Bootcamp will be held June 21-23 in the Grant Thornton office in Chicago. Registration information was distributed via email to the Section. We are grateful to Jay Rich and other members of the Education Committee for their hard work in putting the bootcamp together. Prior Bootcamps have filled up fast, so be sure to register. If you have questions about the bootcamp, please contact Jay Rich, Chair of the Education Committee, at jsrich@ilstu.edu.

Webinars
In February the Section sponsored a Webinar featuring Richard Hatfield, who presented on the current state of Auditor/Client Negotiation Literature. The program qualified for CPE credit. If you missed the live broadcast, you can view the archive. The link can be found on the Auditing Section's website. We would like to thank Rick Lillie and other members of the CPE Committee for all they do to put on the webinars. Watch for our next webinar later in the spring or early summer. If you have suggestions for webinar topics, please contact Rick Lillie, Chair of the CPE Committee at rlillie@csusb.edu or (909) 537-5726. Special thanks to the Wiley Faculty Network for hosting the webinar.

I hope to see you at the AAA Annual Meeting in Denver this August. The meeting dates are August 6–10 and the Section's meeting Director Karla Johnstone and Co-Director Marsha Keune are putting together an outstanding program of panels and papers. Please join us for the Auditing Section luncheon on August 8th to enjoy the fellowship, learn about progress with our strategy, and to hear from our guest speaker Bob Moritz, the Chairman and Senior Partner of PwC.