Aishwarrya Deore, third-year accounting Ph.D. candidate
Each year, the Deloitte Foundation recognizes doctoral candidates from around the United States who are performing outstanding work with its Doctoral Fellowship Program. For the past two years, the Broad College has been represented on the list of recipients, and Aishwarrya Deore, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Accounting, was named a 2020 recipient.
“This is an honor for Aishwarrya and for our program,” said Chris Hogan, chairperson of the Department of Accounting and Information Systems. “The Deloitte Foundation invites applications from approximately 100 universities, and they award approximately 10 fellowships each year.”
In 2015, Deore completed her undergraduate degree in commerce and accountancy at Jain College in Bangalore, India. While completing her degree, she gained experience working at Deloitte as an audit associate for one year.
Deore went on to complete her master’s of finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany. During her time there, Deore was hired as a research assistant to professors of management accounting. “This is where I got my first taste of research; this experience and my love of teaching drove me to apply for Ph.D. programs,” Deore said.
At the Broad College, Deore’s research focuses on management accounting, specifically how internal and external control systems affect quality. To examine this, she utilizes both experimental and archival methods.
“It was the faculty that drew me to apply here,” Deore said. Her research aligns closely with the work of Ranjani Krishnan, Ernest W. & Robert W. Schaberg Endowed Chair in the Department of Accounting and Deore’s advisor, along with other faculty members, including Martin Holzhacker and Kyonghee Kim. Deore also noted the willingness of faculty to assist students in their research, something she said is not common at many schools.
“Once I got here, I knew I made the right choice,” she said. “Faculty here are always pushing students to do their best to generate high-quality research and are with us every step of the way.”
After completing her Ph.D., Deore hopes to continue in academia at a university that champions research and teaching, like MSU. “It is very important that the university I go to have faculty that share the same interests with me and with whom I can author research projects,” she said.
In 2019, Broad College Ph.D. student Hari Ramasubramanian also received the Deloitte Foundation Scholarship. Krishnan commented on Broad’s two-year streak: “When Hari won it last year, it was the first time in over 20 years that MSU won this scholarship,” she said. “It is all the more remarkable that we won it a second year in a row.”
