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N e w F a c u l t y Michelle Lowry Joins Faculty

Michelle Lowry joined the Accounting and Information Systems Department in the fall of 2018 as an assistant professor. She received her Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Hong Kong in 2018. She earned a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University. Lowry’s research interests are in corporate governance, governance structures, monitoring, minority shareholder expropriation, and financial disclosure. Her dissertation investigated the use of status as a mechanism to control corporate boards around two Hong Kong regulations that increase board independence.

Her co-authored papers have examined minority shareholder expropriation and financial disclosure in Hong Kong/China settings. One of her projects explores synergies between corporate governance and information technology governance in a U.S. setting. Her honors and grants include a Hong Kong University Grants Council GRF Grant (co-investigator); Best Paper Award at the 2017 Symposium of Accounting, Auditing, and Corporate Governance Practices in China; and a Hong Kong Postgraduate Fellowship Award. A certified public accountant, Lowry has seven years of public accounting firm experience in Arizona and Utah, most recently as a manager in taxation.

P C A O B R e c i p i e n t PCAOB Scholarship Recipient

Julisa Perdomo Santos received a $10,000 Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCOAB) scholarship. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 provides that funds generated from the collection of monetary penalties imposed by the PCAOB must be used to fund a merit scholarship program for students in accredited accounting degree programs. The PCAOB Scholarship Program therefore has been created to identify eligible students for the scholarship program and award funds through the students’ educational institutions. The Board established the PCAOB scholarship program to provide a source of funding to encourage outstanding undergraduate and graduate students to pursue a career in auditing. Julisa Perdomo Santos is an ACIS senior from Falls Church VA. Upon graduation in the Spring of 2019 she will be working at KPMG as part of the Commercial IT Audit and Assurance group in Tysons Corner/DC Office. At Virginia Tech she is involved with Pamplin Ambassadors, Pamplin Peer Advisors, KPMG Campus Ambassadors, the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, and tutoring in the Student Success Center. Back home, she likes to volunteer and mentor for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, a resource that has helped her get to where she is today. For fun, she likes to hang out with her friends and family and she loves to travel. She is hoping that her next trip out of the country will be to Spain .

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