The ACUA Faculty program is a subcommittee of the Professional Education Committee (PEC). The program began in 2010 with the purpose of promoting ACUA and the internal audit profession, and to connect ACUA members with quality training that was economical and met their training needs. This helps ACUA with fulfillment of two strategic goals which pertain to: 1) being the members’ indispensable resource for professional knowledge exchange and education content for internal auditing in higher education, and 2) being widely recognized as the leading expert on internal auditing and assurance services in colleges and universities. As you can see, our Faculty are very important to ACUA!

Speaking engagements are performed by the Faculty for professional organizations such as NACUBO or URMIA and regional conferences and workgroups for higher education internal auditors or similar groups of professionals. They could also be performed as a session at an ACUA Annual Conference, as one of the ACUA Midyear Conference tracks, or as a webinar for ACUA’s Distance Learning program. For example:

• Four Faculty members led tracks at the 2017 Midyear Conference in Austin, Texas.
• One Faculty member presented an ACUA webinar in April 2017.
• Three Faculty members will be presenting bonus sessions at the 2017 Annual Conference in Phoenix, AZ.

Faculty members are also available to provide high-quality services directly for ACUA’s member institutions. If you are a member institution that is in need of a speaker for an event, or if you are seeking a professional to provide on-site training for your audit department, consider the Faculty program as an option. A request for Faculty speaking or training services can be made online using the Faculty Request Form. The website also provides more information about the Faculty program, including a complete list of Faculty members with their contact information and specialty areas or topics of recent focus.

New 2017 Faculty members include: Allen Amyotte, Director for Internal Audit at the University of Calgary; Craig Anderson, Deputy Director for University Audit at the Virginia Commonwealth University; and Sam McCall, Chief Audit Officer at the Florida State University. This brings the program to 21 Faculty members.

The Faculty program is excited to share news about recent and upcoming developments! We are pleased to announce that Amy Hughes, Director of Internal Audit at Michigan Tech, became the new Faculty Director in December 2016. Amy transitioned into the role upon the departure of the former Faculty Director, Deb Dahlke, Director of the Office of Internal Audit at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We appreciate the efforts and time put forth by Deb and we welcome Amy to the Director role. Joining Amy to assist with program activities is Lynne Sanders, Vice President for Compliance & Audit Services for the University of North Carolina.

Amy and Lynne have the following projects in progress for the Faculty program:

1. “Training for Travel” form. This form was recently finalized and will be available for Faculty members and member institutions that are interested in using an arrangement where a Faculty member provides training for reimbursement of the Faculty member’s travel expenses. The form will not be a requirement for use of the Faculty program, but rather, it is being made available as a tool should the requesting member institution and the Faculty member choose to use it. Use of the form is free, but there is a fee of $65 per training participant when CPE is requested.
2. Faculty toolkits. This is a collaborative effort with the Internal Audit Awareness committee to develop a set of tools for use by the Faculty during their speaking engagements. Tools facilitate awareness about the internal audit profession, awareness about ACUA, and provide a Faculty contact template for presentation slide decks.
3. Table of Faculty members and their areas of expertise. This is being developed for the Faculty program webpage to provide a quick visual for member institutions to use as a reference when they are seeking training on a particular subject. We want to help our member institutions quickly and easily locate options that meet their training needs.
4. Content delivery. Methods for delivery of training are being explored by the PEC and ACUA Headquarters. Faculty training is currently performed via live speaking engagements, in person or via webinar platform for presentation to the ACUA membership. However, there may be opportunities for Faculty to use webinar sessions that are tailored to the requesting member institution and recorded training sessions that are eligible for CPE.
5. Faculty survey. This will be sent to current Faculty members to discuss training delivery options, contributions to the profession, and their satisfaction with the program.

Faculty members are requested to submit information to PEC on an annual basis to communicate information about the speaking engagements or training that they performed during the year. This information includes the topic or title for each engagement, the number of participants or attendees, and how many CPEs were issued. This helps ACUA highlight and promote the Faculty program’s success as part of the overall organizational achievement of its strategic goals. It also helps PEC highlight all of the great work being done by our Faculty members. This is especially important since not all of the speaking engagements and training are performed as part of ACUA’s educational programs.

So remember, the next time you are in need of a speaker for an upcoming event or training for your audit department, visit the Faculty program website or contact one of the following for more information:

ACUA Faculty Director, Amy Hughes, alhughes@mtu.edu
PEC Chair, Nikki Pittman, nlpittman@alaska.edu