Jan R. Williams, Ph.D, CPA, is the Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting and Dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he has been on the faculty since 1977. He received a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Arkansas and is a CPA licensed in Arkansas and Tennessee. Dr. Williams has, for many years, been actively involved in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants, and several other professional organizations. Throughout his career, he has taught continuing professional education for CPAs. In 1994, Dr. Williams received the Outstanding Accounting Educator Award from both the Tennessee Society of CPAs and the AICPA. He was president of the American Accounting Association in 1999-2000 and has authored or co-authored five books and more than 70 articles and other publications on issues related to financial reporting and accounting education.
Terry L. Neal, Ph.D., CPA, is the Dennis Hendrix Professor in Accounting in the Department of Accounting and Information Management at the University of Tennessee. He also is a Research Fellow at the University of Tennessee’s Corporate Governance Center. Dr. Neal currently teaches a graduate course in advanced financial accounting topics, an undergraduate intermediate accounting course, and has taught undergraduate auditing. He has also taught continuing professional education courses for one of the Big 4 accounting firms for several years. Dr. Neal also serves as the director of the Ph.D. program in Accounting and teaches a doctoral seminar in empirical/archival research, with an emphasis on auditing and corporate governance issues.
Judith Weiss, CPA, has an M.S. in Accounting from Long Island University, Greenvale, New York, and an M.S. in Education from Queens College, Flushing, New York. After several years in public accounting and private industry, she worked as a technical manager in the AICPA's Accounting Standards Division, where she helped industry committees to develop Audit and Accounting Guides and Statements of Position. As a senior manager in the national offices of Deloitte & Touche LLP and Grant Thornton LLP, she was involved in projects related to standard-setting by the FASB and the AICPA. Ms. Weiss has followed the work of the EITF since its inception and has attended its meetings regularly since 1991. She has contributed to several books on accounting and auditing and has co-authored articles on accounting standards for several publications, including the Journal of Accountancy, The CPA Journal, The Journal of Real Estate Accounting and Taxation, and the Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance.