Colorado State University’s College of Business Hosts Panel on Integrity in Financial Reporting March 7

Colorado State University’s College of Business will host a panel discussion on integrity in financial reporting on Monday, March 7, from 9 -11 a.m. in the Bohemian Auditorium at Rockwell Hall on campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The event, “Are We Feeding a Financial Facade,” will feature Katherine Schipper, the Thomas F. Keller professor of accounting at Duke University, and Eric Pillmore, senior advisor to the Deloitte Center for Corporate Governance. Margarita Lenk, associate professor of accounting at Colorado State, will serve as moderator of the discussion.

Schipper was named to the Accounting Hall of Fame at The Ohio State University in 2007. Beginning in 2001, she served a five-year term as a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. She is a past president of the American Accounting Association and for many years was co-editor of the Journal of Accounting Research. She is a widely respected empirical researcher with rigorous and clearly focused studies that show a keen insight into the economics and complexities of financial reporting and policy implications. In 1999, she was named the American Accounting Association’s Outstanding Educator and the Illinois CPA Society’s Outstanding Educator.

Pillmore joined the Deloitte Center for Corporate Governance in 2008 and assists a variety of global clients with their corporate governance needs. Prior to joining Deloitte, Pillmore served as senior vice president of Corporate Governance for Tyco International Ltd. from 2002 to 2007. In addition, he served for 17 years in a variety of senior finance roles. He currently serves as the vice chairman of the CEO Forum and on the boards of Grove City College and the Ken Blanchard School of Business at Grand Canyon University.

Lenk has chaired national committees, sectional leadership, and national conference programs for the American Accounting Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, National Campus Compact and KPMG doctorate project. She also mentors minority faculty, students and professionals around the United States. She has been published in Issues in Accounting Education and the Journal of Information Systems Education.

“The goal of the panel discussion is to broaden and deepen our efforts to instill in students an ability to recognize and deal with the inevitable ethical dilemmas they will face in their careers,” said Mary Beth Lewis, the CSU director of the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at CSU and accounting instructor. “We are using the support from the Daniels Fund to enrich our students’ educational experience with curriculum enhancements, expert speakers’ panels, and keynote speaker events, among others, in forums that bring together students, faculty and business people to explore and discuss our collective responsibility to raise ethical standards across the business spectrum.”

The event is made possible through the support of the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative, which awarded a $1.25 million, five-year grant to Colorado State’s College of Business in 2010. CSU’s Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative is part of a partnership between the Daniels Fund and seven other business schools in colleges and universities in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Their goal is to further strengthen principle-based business ethics education for students and faculty.
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