News Stories

I have completed my term as the department chair after three years in the role. Although it was one of the busiest three years in my life, I enjoyed working with the students, alumni, faculty, and other constituents of the department. The department has seen lots of success in the past three years, such as receiving successful AACSB reaccreditation in 2016 and revitalizing the Center for Accounting Research and Education (CARE), which actively engages with students and professionals. The department also added two tenure track faculty members (Professors Hyungshin Park and Amanda Badger) and increased course releases to support faculty research.

The Accounting Department Advisory Board also increased the industry representation by adding three new corporate executives: Jack Lazar, former CFO of GoPro and director on the board of multiple Silicon Valley companies; Joe Allanson, CAO and VP Controller of Salesforce; and Jim Lynch, CFO of San Jose Water Company. We also created six Advisory Board committees to better apply the board’s advice to the department needs.

In addition, the department is finalizing the list of prominent C-Suite alumni to better understand our extensive alumni network and find a way to reengage with them. Resulting from our efforts and the success of our students, the department achieved its highest program ranking: In 2017, US News and World Report ranked the SCU accounting program as #19 in the nation.

While the department enjoyed great success over the past several years, we face various challenges moving forward. First, we must successfully host the AACSB reaccreditation visit in 2020. Second, the department needs to integrate business analytics into the accounting curriculum. We've had a successful first step by adding Professor Hyungshin Park to the faculty who will lead this effort.

Additionally, the department is expecting a high level of faculty turnover in the next few years. Many of our tenured faculty members are in phased retirement. We also face challenges in maintaining the steady enrollment in our undergraduate and CAAP programs. The current undergraduate enrollment is around 90 students per cohort. We’d like to grow that number to around 100-120 students per cohort. The summer CAAP enrollment is trending down due to the economic environment and competition from similar programs. We are diligently working with the Silicon Valley Executive Center, which administers this program, to increase the enrollment and retention rate.

I believe that the department is in excellent hands with Professor Haidan Li as the department chair, Professor Michael Calegari as the CARE director, and Professor Suzanne Luttman as the CAAP director. I will continue to work alongside all the other faculty members towards the goal of making the department even more successful in the coming years.

Short Bio

Yongtae Kim is the Robert and Barbara McCullough Professor of Accounting in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. He is known for his research on managerial opportunism, voluntary disclosure, and corporate social responsibility. Dr. Kim received his doctoral degree from State University of New York at Buffalo with a thesis titled “Disclosure and earnings management by seasoned equity offering firms.” Born in Korea, Dr. Kim received his B.A. and M.A. in Business both from Sogang University in Korea. He obtained his CPA in Korea and worked for KPMG Korea for two-and-a-half years.

Kim joined Santa Clara University in 2001 and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2008. Dr. Kim was then promoted to the rank of full professor in 2013 and was appointed as the Robert and Barbara McCullough Professor of Accounting in 2016. He served as the accounting department chair from 2015 to 2018. Dr. Kim received the University Award for Recent Achievement in Scholarship in 2014 and the University Award for Sustained Excellence in Scholarship in 2018. His research interests are in the broad field of capital markets research in financial accounting, the role of auditors in financial transactions, and corporate social responsibility. He has numerous publications in the most prestigious journals including The Accounting review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Management Science, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of International Business Studies. He is consistently ranked in the top 15 around the world in the area of archival financial accounting research.