The Awards Committee announced the winners of the Outstanding Professional Contributions, Member Excellence in Service and Rising Star Awards at the 2017 Annual Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Outstanding Professional Contribution Award was presented to Kevin Robinson from Auburn University. This award recognizes a member who has made outstanding and noteworthy contributions to the profession by creating wider recognition of internal auditing in higher education, promoting cooperative relationships with other governance-related organizations, and promoting high professional standards and sustained service to higher education and internal auditing professional organizations.
 

Robinson has more than 28 years of service at his university. He also has been very active in ACUA, serving as ACUA President, and guided the Association in fulfilling its strategic plan. He served as a frequent speaker and representative on behalf of ACUA, promoting the organization throughout higher education. Subsequent to his service as ACUA  President, Kevin was able to secure the sponsorship of Baker Tilly, one of ACUA’s most important strategic partners. Through his ACUA involvement, speaking engagements, teaching and other activities, Kevin has made and continues to make outstanding professional contributions to the profession of internal auditing in higher education. Additionally, he is the primary author for a monthly newsletter, Case in Point that is distributed to 1300 individuals at 260 institutions. The newsletter provides an excellent opportunity to promote internal audit in higher education. Lastly, Kevin is the go to, charismatic, speaker and teacher on educating ACUA on fraud in higher education. His expertise is invaluable to ACUA.

 

The Member Excellence in Service Award was presented to Doug Horr from Vanderbilt University. This Award recognizes a member who has made outstanding contributions to the mission of ACUA through exceptional service.

Horr is no stranger to ACUA. Having been active with ACUA since 1992, he person has been in numerous volunteer roles. In fact, ACUA has noted that Doug has served on more committees for more years than any other ACUA member! That is a lot of hours of blood, sweat and tears for ACUA. Horr has been a regular and enthusiastic attender of both the annual and midyear ACUA conferences since joining, and he served the annual conferences in the roles of proctor, track coordinator, conference speaker, and roundtable leader. He has held committee member and leadership roles in numerous committees, including the Membership Committee, the Nominating Committee, the Bylaws Committee, the Audit Committee, NCAA Committee, and he was one of the original team members on the Membership Committee. He is also an active ACUA Ambassador and continuously volunteers to help welcome, greet and assist new ACUA members. He truly exemplifies ACUA’s spirit of camaraderie. He was President of ACUA in 2013, bringing ACUA’s mission and focus back to its members. But he didn’t finish his leadership role and leave after his term ended! He keeps asking for more! Since then, he has served as the Chair of Partnerships Committee, assisting with external and governmental relations directors and promoting ACUA to our partners. For the past 10 years, this recipient serves as our ‘unofficial’ golf outing coordinator.
 

The Rising Star Award was presented to Marion Candrea from Rutgers University. This award recognizes an ‘up and coming’ member who has made significant individual contributions in the areas of internal audit, compliance, or risk management, which further the mission of ACUA. This award is intended to spotlight, cultivate and recognize those developing the personal initiative and commitment to positively impact higher education auditing that is essential to ACUA’s continued success.

Candrea has been an ACUA member since 2008. She was part of the second ACUA  Leads!  Cohort  and  expressed sincere interest in how she could use what she learned from the program to advance auditing within the University and give back to the profession.

Candrea has led a team in conducting the department’s first ever Quality Assurance Review self-assessment, helped transition the NJ School of Medicine’s audit staff into Rutgers after the merger of the two institutions, and aided in the transition of a new Chief Audit Executive. She is an active member of the Audit and Advisory Services management team in making changes (organizational, systems, processes, etc.) for furthering the delivery of outstanding audit and advisory services. Additionally, she is co-director of ACUA’s Governmental Affairs committee and helps coordinates the committee’s activities in monitoring new developments with government regulations and bringing those to ACUA members. Candrea has helped develop the Costing Principles Committee charter and continues to look for ways to improve its value to the membership.
 

The Award Committee members had the privilege of reviewing many outstanding nominations this year and the difficult job of selecting those to be honored. The committee would like to thank all of the ACUA members who took time to recognize the contributions and service of their colleagues.

The 2017 Awards Committee consisted of Betsy Bowers, University of West Florida (chair); Laura Buchhorn, University of Texas – San Antonio; Chris Cavanaugh, Wichita State University; Tom Dwyer, Syracuse University; Whit Madere, Virginia Community College System; Gail Nishida, Chapman University and Meaghan Smith, Oregon Health and Science University.