AICPA Basis awards minority doctoral college students with a $12,000 fellowship

As a part of the AICPA Fellowship for Minority Doctoral College students, which strives to develop and diversify the educator pipeline in accounting applications, the AICPA Basis supplied 23 minority doctoral college students a $12,000 fellowship. 

Established in 1922 to advance training {and professional} development in accounting, the AICPA Basis has been supporting aspiring accountants by means of academic funding for college students in any respect ranges, from highschool seniors to CPAs pursuing a Ph.D. The muse created the fellowship over 50 years in the past beneath the affect of John L. Carey, who labored because the AICPA’s vice chairman and govt director, and infrequently inspired college students from all backgrounds to turn out to be CPAs when he was a college professor. 

“Guided by a core ideology and rules, the inspiration is dedicated to supporting and rising the subsequent era of CPAs by means of three major focuses: accounting and training outreach, scholarships and fellowships and variety and inclusion,” stated Jan Taylor, senior director of educational and scholar engagement on the AICPA. “We have now made nice strides encouraging and offering academic alternatives and selling the hiring of high-potential minority accounting college students over the previous 50 years, however our work is not completed. We nonetheless have a protracted solution to go.”

Christiana Antwi-Obimpeh

Christiana Antwi-Obimpeh, who’s a fellowship recipient this yr, has at all times been an overachiever. Now getting into her fourth yr as a doctoral scholar on the College of Texas, San Antonio, Antwi-Obimpeh remembers her dad and mom as hard-working people who at all times pushed her to succeed in her full potential. A valedictorian in highschool, Antwi-Obimpeh distinguished herself as a gifted scholar earlier than working in public accounting for 4 years and company accounting for seven years.

It was a troublesome resolution to go away a gentle revenue to pursue a Ph.D., and the AICPA’s resolution to grant her the scholarship was a “nice reduction” for the Ohio-based skilled. Naturally good at arithmetic, Antwi-Obimpeh was at all times attracted by the problem-solving facet of accounting, and her top notch at Pennsylvania State College nurtured her curiosity in organizational misconduct and fraud. Nonetheless, the long run professor believed that the accounting career was in want of individuals in academia, and that firms may benefit from her analysis. 

“I believe there is a have to bridge the hole between how practitioners, companies and different organizations interpret info and make choices, versus what people who find themselves impacted by them really understand,” stated Antwi-Obimpeh. “Lecturers can communicate from a extra analytical perspective and talk to firms what could be improved, what could be capitalized upon, and what questions they need to take the time to reply.”

Antwi-Obimpeh has usually seen a discrepancy between firms’ rhetoric and the insurance policies they really enforced. She says that whereas corporations ought to proceed to have DEI councils and encourage minorities to pursue management positions, they need to additionally unfold their efforts to the recruiting course of. Antwi-Obimpeh seen that many companies do not rent from Hispanic Serving Establishments like hers and, because of this, their workforce would not at all times replicate the communities they serve. She additionally thinks that college students from underrepresented backgrounds are sometimes barred from the accounting career as a result of they’ve by no means been uncovered to these careers, and that is an opinion that Jose Nicolas Arguello additionally shares.

Jose Nicolas Arguello

At present finding out on the College of Tennessee, Knoxville, for his doctorate, Arguello is a first-generation scholar who’s additionally been chosen as a fellowship recipient. He says that many minority college students usually flip away from accounting within the perception that it is a troublesome and boring self-discipline that requires numerous numbers. Nonetheless, Arguello benefited from accounting studying and profession alternatives throughout his undergraduate years, when the College of North Texas, which is an HSI, started its Accounting Students Program. In his opinion, it is initiatives like that or the AICPA’s that promote the curiosity of minority college students. 

“The AICPA and their donors are so extremely beneficiant with their Legacy Students Program, and it made an enormous optimistic affect on me and the opposite tons of of Legacy Students,” stated Arguello. “I believe the AICPA and numerous public accounting corporations are doing a implausible job with DEI within the career.”

Attributing most of his success to his mentors and household, Arguello hopes that different college students will quickly share his enthusiasm for the language of enterprise, the soundness of the career and the alternatives that include it. Planning to work for PwC in its audit and assurance apply and pursue his CPA licensure, Arguello desires to observe the Mendoza School of Enterprise motto by rising “the great in enterprise” and changing into a optimistic power in society.