Guest Speakers
The Fisher College of Business is obviously a prestigious institution that draws talent from all over the country, but I guess I never realized their pull until I started to experience it first hand with the guest speakers that come to talk to the graduate students here. In my AMIS 804 course, we’ve already had two guest speakers that both have had very impressive resumes and interesting presentations to give to the MAcc students.
Our first presenter was Jim Leisenring. Jim was in town for an event related to the Accounting Hall of Fame (fun fact – the Accounting Hall of Fame is based here at OSU) and our professor managed to get him to come speak to our class. Jim Leisenring is both a former FASB board member and a former IASB board member, which when you think about it, is as close to a rock-star in the accounting world as you can really get…
We had our second guest speaker for that class today. His name was Robert Sledge, and he was coming to us from the Transaction Services group of KPMG in Chicago. Apparently Robert was a student of the MAcc program (class of 2006) and then moved onto bigger and better things, including a postgraduate technical assistant (PTA) position with the FASB.
As it just so happens, there was also a guest speaker in another one of my classes today – Brand Management. Although I unfortunately cannot recall his exact position, he has worked with the brand managements of multiple successful brands, including Elmer’s and Bob Evans. As an extra bonus, he brought some baked goods to go along with the Bob Evans brand, and I have to say they have some amazing cinnamon rolls!
Aside from these occasional guest speakers in class, we also have the opportunity to hear guest speakers for the weekly Accounting Research Workshops. These speakers visit from all over the country to present their current research papers in progress. I’ll admit that some of the topics feel a bit over my head (some of them are more PHD focused than others), but they are always interesting/engaging topics. Just a few days ago, we had someone presenting their paper on the topic of the contagion effect of audit failures – interesting stuff!
I’m really glad that the MAcc program provides us the access to all these great speakers, and I look forward to all the excellent speakers to come.
Tyler