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Among the ten PhD candidates selected in the United States for the 2022 Deloitte Foundation’s annual Doctoral Fellowship in Accounting grant is Il Sun Yoo, a doctoral student at the Merage School.  

The $25,000 fellowships are presented to PhD students planning academic careers, and the grant supports each recipient’s final year of coursework and the completion of a doctoral dissertation. This year, 50 candidates were nominated for the award by accounting university faculty across the nation.  

“Accounting is the language of business,” says Yoo. “When I complete my degree, I plan to contribute to the accounting field as a professor and dedicated researcher.” He hopes to replicate the support his Merage School professors offer: “They are willing to help students grow, and such inspirational role models make a huge difference in a student’s progress.” 

The fellowship will bolster Yoo’s important fourth and final year at the Merage School. “These grants are awarded at a critical time in a future educator’s academic career journey,” says Erin Scanlon, Deloitte Foundation president. “This financial support encourages the selected PhD candidates to devote themselves full time to the final step of researching and writing their dissertations and is one way the foundation can help to strengthen the quantity and quality of accounting professors who will teach thousands of students over time.”  

An accounting career leads to in-depth study of the field 

Yoo most recently worked on a Hyundai Motor Group accounting team, from 2011 to 2015, in Seoul, Korea, his hometown. He earned a master’s degree in accounting from the Merage School and a bachelor’s in business administration from Konkuk University in Seoul.  

Among his research interests are disclosure, law and regulations and customer/supplier relationships. Yoo’s dissertation, “When Friends Become Foes: Proprietary Information Disclosure After Failed M&A Deals,” is in progress. He was also recognized with the 2021 Excellence in Reviewing Award by the American Accounting Association Financial Accounting and Reporting Section and has co-authored and presented several working papers over the last three years. 

“I saw the importance of accounting in the business world,” he says about working in the field, where he encountered many evolutions within the practice. “These changes affect our behavior in a number of ways, which led to my research investigating the various aspects and effects of accounting standards and regulations. I am looking forward to an academic career that allows me to share this interest with others.”  

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