Terry L. Neal, Ph.D., CPA, is the Richard L. Townsend Accounting Chair and head of the Department of Accounting and Information Management at the University of Tennessee. He also is the director of the University of Tennessee’s C. Warren Neel Corporate Governance Center. Neal currently teaches a graduate course in advanced financial accounting topics, an undergraduate intermediate accounting course, and has also taught undergraduate auditing and a doctoral seminar in empirical/archival research with an emphasis on auditing and corporate governance issues. He has also taught continuing professional education courses for one of the Big 4 accounting firms for several years, and is a co-author of CCH’s GAAP Guide, a financial accounting reference book for practicing CPAs.

Neal’s research primarily addresses issues related to corporate governance and auditor independence, with a particular emphasis on the role of the audit committee as a corporate governance mechanism. Neal’s research has been published in The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Accounting Horizons, The International Journal of Accounting, and Corporate Governance: an international review. He currently serves on the editorial board at The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, and Current Issues in Auditing. Neal also has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for several other journals including Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Accounting Literature, and Issues in Accounting Education.

Neal received a B.S. in accounting from Tennessee Technological University (1988) and a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee (1998). Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Tennessee, Neal was on the faculty of the Douglas J. Von Allmen School of Accountancy at the University of Kentucky from 1998-2003. Prior to entering academia, Neal worked in the Nashville and Knoxville offices of KPMG (1988-1991), and in the internal auditing department of Lockheed Martin (1991-1994).