“The class load and workload required to complete the Professional Program is challenging,” Robertson says of his experience. “It requires students to learn to manage their time between classes, projects, tests and outside responsibilities. Juggling all these different demands and still successfully completing the program entrenched a work ethic serves me well in my job today.”

The PPA program started just over 20 years ago after Texas lawmakers mandated that accounting students have 150 hours of accounting education instead of 120. Accounting faculty at Mays responded with a combination of courses that prepare students not only for careers as accountants, but also for possible careers in other business fields.

“We felt that the spirit of the increased requirements was to have students develop more skills and to have a broader understanding of business,” explains James Benjamin, accounting department head and one of the architects of the PPA program. “Since many CPAs ultimately take jobs outside of public accounting, we feel that master’s degrees in other fields may help with career advancement.”

In August 1992, 30 students entered the PPA program in August 1992 – a small number compared to the current roster accepted year of almost 250 students. PPA students receive their bachelor’s in accounting and then choose a master’s degree from one of five programs: marketing, finance, accounting, management information systems or entrepreneurial leadership. Offering a variety of master’s degrees makes the PPA program at Mays unique, Benjamin says. It has propelled the program to one of the world’s top-ranked.

“We are consistently one of the top suppliers of new hires for the Big Four accounting firms,” Benjamin says of the program’s success.

Also, more students in the Mays program pass the CPA exam than in any other school in Texas.

Matthew Josefy ’04 finished the PPA program with his master’s in finance, and worked for companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Bank of America before returning to Mays to work on his PhD in management.

“It was only as a professional that I realized how unique the intensity of the recruiting efforts directed at the graduates of the program really were,” Josefy says of the opportunities the program creates. “It provides a reliable launch pad for incredibly talented students. Even in the midst of what I hope was the most severe downturn in our lifetime, the vast majority of the graduates of the program were receiving solid job offers.”

Kaitlyn Lentz, who will graduate from the program in May, says it appealed to her because of the opportunity to develop both her talent for accounting and her passion for marketing. She has a job lined up at Marathon Oil after graduation, and says she feels prepared for a dynamic career in any industry.

“From my experience in the PPA program, I have learned to individually approach problems and challenges,” she asserts.

About Mays Business School

Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School educates more than 5,000 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students in accounting, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and supply chain management. Mays consistently ranks among the top public business schools in the country for its undergraduate and MBA programs, and for faculty research. The mission of Mays Business School is creating knowledge and developing ethical leaders for a global society.

T. Randall “Randy” Cain ’82

Cain, Vice Chair and Southwest Regional Managing Partner of the firm where he has worked for 30 years, says he and his wife wanted to create the Randy ’82 and Jyl Cain Accounting Education Excellence Fund to help ensure continued excellence in accounting education at Mays.

Matching funds from the Ernst & Young Foundation will be used to complete the gift, which is being funded through the Texas A&M Foundation. “Without the quality students A&M provides and the top-notch graduates from Mays, we would have a hard time meeting our professional goals,” he explains.

Proceeds from the fund will be used to support strategic initiatives of the accounting department. “Hopefully, it will allow more flexibility to the professors so they can focus on doing what they do best, which is to attract the top students and provide them with the knowledge they need to succeed,” Cain explains.

He praised the accomplishments of Mays Dean Jerry Strawser and accounting department head James Benjamin, and added, “We are trying to give them the tools – the arrows in their quiver.”

“It is difficult to envision how anybody could participate more in the life of our school,” said Mays Dean Jerry Strawser. “Whether hiring our students, speaking to our classes, serving on advisory boards or providing financial support, Randy has literally impacted thousands of Mays graduates. We are truly blessed to have him as an advocate for our students and programs.”

The Cains’ affinity for Texas A&M has trickled down to the next generation: daughter and son-in-law Courtney and Tim Kuhn ’06 were part of the Professional Program at Mays, each earning a BBA in Accounting and an MS in Management Information Systems. Daughter Meredith Cain ’13 is also at Texas A&M, studying recreation, park and tourism sciences.

About Mays Business School

Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School educates more than 5,000 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students in accounting, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and supply chain management. Mays consistently ranks among the top public business schools in the country for its undergraduate and MBA programs, and for faculty research. The mission of Mays Business School is creating knowledge and developing ethical leaders for a global society.

His work at Daystar is inspiring and always interesting, the accounting and finance graduate of Mays Business School recently told a group of undergraduates, including Business Honors students. Every day, Torres utilizes the accounting and finance skills he acquired in college and in banking to do his job at Daystar. He encouraged the students to consider careers in television, where opportunities range from analysts who work for the networks to accountants to CFOs.

Daystar Television Network CFO Arnold Torres ’85 recently spoke to Mays Business Honors students about his experiences in the television industry. (view more photos)

When Torres’ career with Daystar began in 2001, he intended to stay six months. “Then they got rid of their COO, and I’ve been there ever since. I learn something new all the time, so it is really enjoyable. I am fortunate to have this job.”

Torres says he has learned a lot about the industry in his years with the company. TV still remains the No. 1 way to reach people each day, with 88.3 percent of people as viewers compared with 73.1 percent on the Internet. In comparison with the Internet and other media outlets, TV also reaches more people at all age groups, more upscale households and more women than men.

Dallas-based Daystar strives for diverse programming within its genre, and there are so many programs trying to be carried by the network that there is a waiting list. Daystar is broadcast in 680 million home worldwide and is available in more than 200 countries. A toll-free prayer line receives more than 1 million calls a year.

“Our outreach is that we buy a TV station or secure cable carriage in a new city,” Torres explains. “We don’t sell any commercial advertising; we use that time to promote our own programming and our programmers on the network.”

The money raised from the programmers is used to cover overhead and operating expenses. Twice a year, the company holds fund-raising events to raise money and 100 percent is used for buying new television stations and other outreach projects.

Torres urged the Mays students to learn all they can while they are in school. “Don’t take it for granted that you are here, just take it all in every step of the way.” In particular, he urged the students to hone their communication skills, both written and verbal. “If you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter how analytical or book savvy you are. If you can’t explain it in spoken or written fashion, you won’t get your point across.”

Distributions from the endowment will be used to provide scholarships to full-time students enrolled in the Professional Program within the Mays Department of Accounting, a track that allows students to earn bachelor’s degrees in accounting as well as a master’s degree in five years.

Pape says she wanted to give back to the college that gave her so much. She says the Professional Program did not exist when she received her bachelor’s degree in accounting. “Back then, you got a four-year degree, you graduated and you went to work,” she says. “I would have enjoyed this program, but I don’t think I could have afforded another year.”

She says she can attest to the program’s quality, as she employs six graduates from the program at Genesis Energy LP in Houston, where she is senior vice president and controller.

Concern over expense prompted Pape to donate to Mays – to support the students in the program as well as their parents. “I know the struggle the students face with the program, particularly during that fifth year. And I know the parents aren’t anticipating that extra expense from the outset.”

“Karen’s generosity will have a significant impact on our students,” said Mays Dean Jerry Strawser. “The ability her gift provides to offset some of the costs associated with the required additional year of study in our Professional Program will open this opportunity to a greater number of our top students.”

About Mays Business School

Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School educates more than 5,000 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students in accounting, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and supply chain management. Mays consistently ranks among the top public business schools in the country for its undergraduate and MBA programs, and for faculty research. Its mission is to create knowledge and develop ethical leaders for a global society.

Paletta graduated from Texas A&M with an accounting degree before venturing into public accounting, working for Deloitte & Touche. His job eventually took him to California, where he met and married his wife.

Lou Paletta ’78 told Mays Business Honors students, “ultimately the people you work with and the culture of the company make a difference.” (view more photos)

In 1993, the San Antonio native took a job back in Texas with Lone Star Funds, a global private equity investment firm with aggregate capital commitments totaling more than $33 billion, according to the company’s website. At Lone Star, Paletta’s position involves establishing new sources of capital as well as managing relationships between the company and investors. Lone Star Funds focuses on “distressed investing,” and Paletta says the company “likes being in the debt space.”

With a wealth of experience behind him, Paletta had a valuable piece of advice for the business honors students: “Don’t get consumed with the resume and miss the ride.” He spoke with the students about the “journey” of his career, advising the students to “listen a lot, and learn a lot” from those around them.

Part of Paletta’s personal learning process has been travelling the world with Lone Star. “I’ve been everywhere,” he says, “and my perception of America changes the more I spend time with different cultures.” Paletta’s career has taken him to places like Europe, Japan, the Middle East and most recently, Australia and New Zealand.

Paletta tells students to “find the right fit,” referring to their current or impending job search. “Don’t get overly consumed in the prestige of a job, because it’s ultimately the people you work with and the culture of the company that makes a difference.” Paletta says Lone Star’s own culture of maintaining a “flat organizational structure” suits him well, because he’s “never been big on titles.”

Paletta currently serves on the board of directors for the 12th Man Foundation, as well as the Dean’s Development Council for Mays Business School. A strong believer in Aggie values and education, Paletta urges students to take advantage of the Aggie network—“The relationships built during and after school will be a big part of your life.”

Anderson (Managing Director) and Manz (Director) work for AlixPartners, a global consulting firm that specializes in turnaround management. The two work in the forensic accounting sector, and Anderson admits that they often feel “like spies on a mission” with many of their job duties.

AlixPartners Managing Director Stephanie Anderson ’89 told students that employee fraud often starts out on a small scale. “But eventually, their perception of right and wrong swings farther and farther away from our perception of right and wrong.” (view more photos)

Anderson and Manz used a recent case their team handled as an example of what forensic accounting entails, describing the process as the “anatomy of a covert investigation.”

“The beginning of the process is pretty quick,” says Manz. “We get a phone call from the whistleblower, the allegations are presented, and we make immediate decisions on the next course of action.”

Anderson and Manz said after this first spark of a potential case, the team sifts through the allegation details—examining the credibility of the company’s whistleblower and separating allegations that are “just noise” (inappropriate office relationships, bitterness towards management, etc.) from claims that are based on monetary fraud. As soon as Anderson’s team has probable cause of improper use of company resources, an office raid is conducted.

“Bob was the leader of the SWAT team,” Anderson jokes of Manz. Manz explained that in their recent case, he led a team of data collectors, IT specialists and even a locksmith to legally break into the company’s office one weekend and comb through electronic and paper documents. The team worked for more than 48 hours straight, collecting data and meticulously putting the office back to exactly how the employees had left it.

After the office raid is complete, the AlixPartners team members prepare the evidence for review, conduct interviews with the involved parties and present their findings to the auditors and lawyers.

With more than 20 years of experience in forensic accounting, Anderson says she has seen a common theme in employee fraud— it starts small. “It’s just a little shift in their moral compass. But eventually, their perception of right and wrong swings farther and farther away from our perception of right and wrong.”

Anderson received her undergraduate in accounting from Texas State University before earning her MBA in business management from Texas A&M University in 1989. Prior to joining AlixPartners, Anderson held positions at Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers, working in countries such as Kuwait, Mexico and Russia. Manz , received an accounting degree from “that other school,” as Anderson describes it: the University of Texas at Austin.

Despite their accounting backgrounds, Anderson and Manz echoed many Mays business professors when they told the Business Honors students that they’ve got to learn sales, regardless of their major. “I never wanted to go into sales,” Anderson says, “But the further and further you climb up the ladder in a company, the more you have to learn how to sell your products or services in order to drive revenue.” …Even in a forensic accounting firm.

“How much vision do you need to have during the interview process?” Langston asked the students. “What do you have to know about what you want to do when you’re sitting in that interview chair?”

“Be humble enough to admit that at 21, 22, or 23 years old you don’t have absolute certainty about what it is that you want to do for the rest of your life,” Avalon Advisors co-founder Willie T. Langston II ’81 told Business Honors students during a recent visit. (view more photos)

Graduating with an accounting degree from Texas A&M University and an MBA from Stanford, Langston says he didn’t have his career path nailed down before interviewing in the business arena. He took a job in public accounting after graduating, and says that although it wasn’t his dream job, he quickly learned that didn’t mean it wasn’t the right job. “For me it was boring, I was no good at doing it, and it was still one of the best career decisions that I could have made,” he says. Langston claims his two years in public accounting taught him how to be organized and structured— two skills that propelled him to later success at companies such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and his own company he co-founded in 2001, Avalon Advisors.

Langston claims that landing the “right job,” rather than the dream job, hinges on approaching the job search with an open, truthful frame of mind.

“Be humble enough to admit that at 21, 22, or 23 years old you don’t have absolute certainty about what it is that you want to do for the rest of your life,” the Palestine, Texas native told students about sitting in an interview chair. He explained that too many college graduates are programmed to believe they should know every detail about a job, even when they’ve never worked the position. “Truth is right, but truth requires preparation,” Langston adds, encouraging students to thoroughly learn their DNA and what they want out of their careers. “Press yourself to be more prepared than your peers so that you can be fully truthful and allow truth to fully work for you; leading you to the job that you should have, not could have.”

Langston also spoke to the students about maintaining the right mindset after getting the job. Referencing a recent sermon by Gregg Matte ’92, Langston says, “Perspective determines priorities, which dictate practice. … For example, my family means more to me than my career,” he says, “and that perspective determines my priorities and practice.” Langston also cautions the students on trying to maintain a perspective in a company that cultivates a contrasting one—“Trust me, at 22 and the low person on the totem pole, it is far more likely that your firm influences your priorities than you’re shifting its culture,” he says.

Langston is the first in a series of speakers who will come talk to the Business Honors students, and he was quick to commend the Aggies on their obvious hard work. He closed with Luke 12:48 — “To whom much is given, much is required”— a challenge for the students to maximize the rich knowledge they’ve received at Texas A&M.

In other words, the tax-specific expertise of the external auditing company a firm hires potentially makes a big difference in companies’ level of tax avoidance, and ultimately, net income.

Wang

Omer

McGuire

Mays Business School faculty members and researchers Sean McGuire (an assistant professor in accounting), Thomas Omer (Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting) and Dechun Wang (assistant professor in accounting) set out to investigate the relationship between firms’ level of tax avoidance and the proficiencies of the external auditing companies those firms were hiring.

“We started this project because we were interested in the influence of the external audit firm on their clients’ tax avoidance activities,” says McGuire. “Many corporations hire their external audit firm to provide tax services in addition to their audit services. Accordingly, our goal was to investigate whether the tax expertise of audit firms that provide tax services to their client influences their clients’ level of tax avoidance.”

McGuire defines tax avoidance as “any strategy that reduces a firm’s tax liability, used by companies to generate cash savings and increase after tax earnings by reducing their tax expense.”

“Consistent with other academic research,” he explains, “we view tax avoidance as a continuum that ranges from clearly legal strategies, like investments in municipal bonds, to those of questionable legality, like tax shelters.”

The research relied on previous audit studies that define expertise in terms of industry and audit office fees. Two types of industry expertise were identified to measure the level of expertise in firms: overall expertise and tax expertise.

Both overall and tax expertise are designed to capture an audit firm’s tax expertise within a particular industry and city office. However, overall expertise includes audit expertise, rather than solely the firm’s level of tax proficiency.

To gather the information, McGuire says the researchers estimated companies’ tax-specific industry expertise based on an audit firm’s market share in a given industry and city. “We calculated market share using publicly available data from Audit Analytics,” McGuire shares.

The results of the research found that firms who hire industry experts exhibit higher levels of tax avoidance relative to firms that do not hire industry experts.

McGuire expounds upon the research results, saying, “I think the most interesting finding is that the clients of audit firms that have overall expertise, i.e. combined audit and tax expertise, exhibit high levels of tax avoidance. This finding suggests that the combined tax and financial reporting expertise of audit firms allows them to develop tax strategies that benefit their clients from both a tax and financial statement perspective.”

The research results provide a number of significant contributions to tax avoidance literature. Not only do the findings contribute to the stream of research investigating the variation in firms’ tax avoidance activities, but they also provide evidence on the association between the industry expertise of the firm’s external auditor and the firm’s tax activities.

According to McGuire, prior research documents substantial variation in firms’ level of tax avoidance. “Given that there are obvious benefits to avoiding income taxes (higher net income), it is important to understand why some firms are more successful than others in avoiding income taxes,” he says. “It is also interesting to examine whether the industry expertise developed by audit firms (in terms of tax-specific expertise and auditing expertise) influences the tax avoidance of their clients.”

(Top, L-R) Cheryl Holland Bridges, Duane Ireland; (Bottom, L-R) Kerry Litzenberg, Michael Shaub

Cheryl Bridges (marketing) and Michael Shaub (accounting) were given the 2012 Distinguished Achievement Awards to recognize their teaching, and Robert “Duane” Ireland (management) was recognized for research. Kerry Litzenberg of Agricultural Economics also received a teaching award.

Bridges is director of the Center for Retailing Studies and an executive professor of marketing. Shaub is a clinical professor. Ireland is a distinguished professor and the Conn Chair in New Ventures Leadership. Litzenberg is a professor of agricultural economics.

The awards were announced by Texas A&M and the Association of Former Students. They will be formally presented April 25. Each recipient will receive a cash gift, an engraved watch and a commemorative plaque.

The university-level Distinguished Achievement Awards were first presented in 1955 and have since been awarded to 930 professionals (including this year’s recipients) who have exhibited the highest standards of excellence at Texas A&M. In addition to teaching and research awards, employees are also recognized in the categories of staff, student relations, administration, extension and outreach and graduate mentoring.

Deer

The annual award is intended to recognize extraordinary efforts and innovation in teaching effectiveness, curriculum development and student services in the accounting department.

Previous awards went to accounting Associate Professor Connie Weaver in 2010 and accounting Professor Chris Wolfe in 2011. The recipients receive a plaque and a cash award.

The award was made possible through an endowment created by Denise and David Baggett ’81. David, who graduated with honors with an accounting degree, is the senior partner of Opportune LLP.

Deer’s accomplishments include:

• Developing an energy accounting course in 2010 and subsequently making a number of improvements in the course. Enrollment in that course has increased from 35 in 2010 to 60 in 2012.
• Successfully hosting the first Halliburton Energy Case Competition and currently coordinating the second annual competition. Halliburton was so pleased with the first-year results that they quadrupled the prize money for the winners.
• Obtaining approval for an Energy Accounting Certificate Program, which will provide an opportunity for both BBA and PPA students to gain a competitive advantage in the industry.
• Developing projects for the energy course with Marathon that allow students to gain real-world experience. Students going into public accounting can elect to audit a project to gain applicable audit experience.
• Developing a series of video lectures for use in Accounting 229. She is filming weekly video lectures for students to watch prior to attending class. Class time is used for discussions and working challenging problems with students.
• Setting up group office hours as an opportunity for students to ask questions or work problems in a group environment.
• Along with watching videos prior to class, students are required to complete a packet prior to coming to class – an approach that has significantly increased the number of students who are prepared prior to class.
• Mentoring a PPA student teaching a one-hour Excel course to 34 undergraduate students and an undergraduate student teaching a one-hour general energy industry course to 20 undergraduate students (meets with them weekly to prepare for class, attends class, and provides feedback);
• Serving as the lead instructor for the Becker CPA review course for five years, mentoring students in their application and preparation to take the CPA exam; and meets with many former students to help them in choosing their track for PPA and internship locations.
• Working with BBA students, helping them obtain employment, especially in the energy industry.