During spring quarter 2019, four students in the MS Audit and Advisory Services program were selected to work with Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) on an internal audit analytics project, while taking Associate Professor David Wang’s audit analytics class. The opportunity provided a valuable and practical learning experience for students Christine Echipare, Zhenyu Liu, Wayne Lowry and Tiffany McCoy, to understand some of the audit challenges faced by companies.
“I learned a great deal about internal audit procedures from this project,” says Liu, one of the students who participated. “I appreciated being able to apply audit analytics concepts and ideas learned from the course to a professional business setting.”
After collaborating intensively with PCA’s internal audit team for three months, the students delivered their final presentation in June, providing actionable recommendations to PCA and creative ways to visualize analytics results.
“The project enhanced my consulting skills and technical understanding of data visualization,” says Tiffany McCoy, another student participant. “It was an enlightening real-world application of fundamental course content.”
Left to right: Copeland Felts, David Wang, Wayne Lowry, Yulia Gurman, Tiffany McCoy, Christine Echipare, Zhenyu Liu and Ryan Hopkins.