Spring Commencement 2017

Karen M. Bowling

Graduate Speaker

Karen M. Bowling is a partner with Deloitte & Touche LLP and primarily operates in the power and utilities practice of the firm’s Atlanta office. She is also a current member of the board of directors of the Atlanta chapter of the Women’s Energy Network. Prior to her roles in Atlanta, Karen worked in Deloitte’s Charlotte office and also was a partner in Deloitte’s National Professional Practice Office in Connecticut. While in the Professional Practice Office, she served as a liaison to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and was involved in all aspects of the PCAOB’s inspection of Deloitte & Touche LLP, including inspections of audit engagements and firm-wide quality control activities. She also developed and reviewed firm communications, practice aids, tools, and policies related to the regulatory environment, developments in audit quality, and various inspection matters.

Karen has led audit engagements that have included acquisitions of renewable energy facilities; accounting for the impacts of regulatory actions; international business combinations; carve-outs; public and private secondary debt offerings; investments in joint ventures; and the coordination of global auditing and reporting activities and the associated multi-location testing of internal control over financial reporting. She also has experience in accounting for defined benefit plans, asset retirement obligations, impairment losses, employee severance costs, and bankruptcy accounting and reporting standards. In addition, Karen assisted the AICPA Task Force that rewrote the Airline Industry Accounting and Audit Guide issued in 2008 and she had an international assignment related to the US registration of a global energy and services conglomerate.

Karen is a certified public accountant in Georgia and a member of the AICPA. She started her career in public accounting in Atlanta with Arthur Andersen LLP and joined Deloitte in 2002. Karen is a frequent facilitator for local and national learning programs and is Deloitte’s lead recruiting partner at the University of Tennessee where she was a summa cum laude graduate of the Department of Accounting and Information Management (AIM). Karen is a member of AIM’s Accounting Advisory Roundtable and was honored in 2014 as the University’s Haslam College of Business Outstanding Young Alum. Karen resides in Louisville, TN with her husband, Mark, who is also a graduate of the University of Tennessee and is the Director of Bands at Karns Middle School in Knoxville.

Michelle Harding

Graduate Hooding Speaker

Michelle Harding came to UT after earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Virginia and after gaining 10 years of industry experience. She will graduate in spring 2017 with a PhD in business administration with an accounting emphasis. She has already accepted a tenure track position as an assistant professor of accounting at Virginia Tech University, starting in fall 2017.

Harding’s interests in tax disclosure and policy steered her to a dissertation entitled “The Impact of Increased Tax Return Reporting on Financial Statement Tax Disclosure Quality: Evidence from IRS Schedule UTP.” When she graduates, she will be the first African-American female to receive a PhD in accounting from UT. Being the only African-American PhD student in Haslam motivated Harding to help found UT’s Multicultural Graduate Student Organization (MGSO). The MGSO was created to help build community among UT’s diverse graduate student population and provide professional development opportunities that expose students to the wealth of resources available on campus. Harding feels that this has been her most important accomplishment at UT outside of successfully completing the doctoral program.

Harding credits many people in the Haslam College of Business as playing a critical role in her success. She lauds the influence and guidance of her dissertation chair LeAnn Luna, recognizes Robert Fuller for his role in encouraging her research pursuits, and speaks very highly of Linda Myers for providing an environment that gives PhD students equal access, rewards their effort, and celebrates their success. And she is optimistic about the direction of the college and supports its investment in authentic diversity, especially through the efforts of college administrators such as Tyvi Small and Dean Stephen Mangum.

A native of Williamsburg, Virginia, Michelle’s accomplishments extend beyond the classroom and beyond UT. She has traveled to four continents, and three of these visits were for short-term mission trips. She volunteers as a mentor in Knoxville and previously showed her volunteer spirit in Orlando and Nashville. She currently serves on the board of Girl Talk, Inc., where she has volunteered as an after-school mentor to girls in third through fifth grades at Green Magnet Elementary School.