Campus to clients: faculty internships: connecting tax practice and academia.

• Author: Noga, Tracy J.

EVERY YEAR, THOUSANDS OF EAGER GRADUATES leave college campuses to join the accounting profession. These new professionals seek opportunities to apply the theory and skills learned in the classroom to real-world client situations. Yet, many of the accounting and tax professors training these future leaders of the profession lack a clear understanding of the realities of today's accounting and tax practice.

Although many accounting academics have practice experience, decades may have passed since their transition from the "real world" back to the ivory tower. Faculty internships, in which academics reenter practice for a period of time, are valuable to professors and the sponsoring organizations. This column describes the benefits of faculty internships and issues faculty and firms interested in pursuing such arrangements should consider. While this discussion focuses on tax professors and practice, similar opportunities exist in other areas of accounting.

Both authors of this column completed faculty internships in the tax division of a large office of a Big Four public accounting firm. During internship periods of approximately four months, they worked on a variety of client service projects. The experiences were diverse, encompassing tax return preparation, technical research, memo writing, accounting methods projects, tax provision review, and participating in national and local office training. Although these internships provided somewhat similar experiences, other quite different faculty internship opportunities also exist.

Across the country, tax faculty have completed internships with the federal government at the IRS, the joint Committee on Taxation, and the Senate Finance Committee. Within public tax practice, faculty have interned at Big Four, national, and local firms. Although these public accounting and government experiences are different, discussions with any one of these faculty interns would probably have a common theme: It was a valuable, worthwhile experience. Opportunities exist or can be created for those faculty and sponsors willing to pursue them.

Benefits of Faculty Internships

The benefits of faculty internships are mutual from the perspective of the academic and the professional. The most tangible benefit for all is curriculum improvement. During the internship, faculty members learn what the most important technical topics currently are as well as the emerging issues of a changing business environment. This learning may be on-the-job during a client engagement or during formal training the faculty member attended or completed on the web.

Faculty interns also become acquainted (or reacquainted) with the knowledge and skills that new staff need to successfully start their careers and remain successful long term. As a result, faculty returning to campus can adjust the tax curriculum to ensure that graduating students are prepared for work on day one. The obvious benefit for the firms is that students will be better prepared to join the workforce as the curriculum responds to the firms' needs. In turn, students graduating from those programs will...