Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2010 — The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Chief Accountant today announced the selection of Shawn Davis and Saurav Dutta as Academic Accounting Fellows for one-year terms beginning this summer.
Academic Accounting Fellows serve as research resources for SEC staff by interpreting and communicating research materials as they relate to the agency. In addition, Academic Accounting Fellows have been assigned to ongoing projects in the Chief Accountant’s office that include rulemaking, serving as a liaison with the professional accounting standards-setting bodies, and consulting with registrants on accounting, auditing, independence and reporting matters.
“The experience that Shawn and Saurav bring as fellows from academia is a great benefit to our Office of the Chief Accountant, but more importantly, their knowledge and perspective will benefit U.S. investors,” said James Kroeker, the SEC’s Chief Accountant.
Ms. Davis is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Practice of Accounting at Emory University, where she teaches both financial accounting and managerial accounting to undergraduate and graduate students. She earned her Ph.D. from Washington University, MBA and MAS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her BBA from Jackson State University. Her research primarily focuses on how auditing judgment and decision-making affects financial decisions and markets, and has been presented at national and international conferences. Her dissertation examining the disclosure of auditors’ materiality judgments won the 2005 Outstanding Dissertation in Auditing Award from the American Accounting Association.
Ms. Davis is the recipient of several research grants, including grants from KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. She served as an academic researcher for the American Accounting Association Auditing Section’s Research Synthesis Program to examine the auditor’s reporting model. Ms. Davis research employs a variety of methods including experimental economics, decision cases and field experiments, and her work has been published in Accounting Horizons, Behavioral Research in Accounting, and New Zealand Economic Papers. Additionally, she has appeared as a guest speaker for several professional practice conferences and workshops.
Mr. Dutta is an Associate Professor and former Chair of the Department of Accounting and Business Law at the University at Albany-SUNY, New York. He received his B.Tech. in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and his Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Kansas. He is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and received the Robert Beyer Silver Medal for the second highest total score on the CMA examination in 1989. He was also awarded the National Talent Search Scholarship in 1979 by the Government of India. He has held academic positions at Rutgers University and the City University of New York- Baruch College.
Mr. Dutta has published extensively in the field of accounting and auditing in various national and international journals. While his earlier work focused on audit quality, risk and materiality, his more recent work is in the area of sustainability, triple-bottom line reporting and forensic accounting. He also has frequently consulted on complex accounting and auditing issues related to derivatives and hedge accounting, mergers and acquisitions, and statistical verification of claims for some of the largest corporate settlements in the U.S.
Ms. Shawn Davis and Mr. Saurav Dutta will replace the current Academic Accounting Fellows. Jack Krogstad will return to the Creighton University, and Nancy Mangold will return to the California State University, East Bay.