Suhas Sridharan joined UCLA Anderson as an assistant professor in accounting in July, but didn’t grow up dreaming of a career in academia. She was raised in South Carolina by parents who were both college professors, a circumstance she says made her not want to become one herself.
“I went to Emory University with a goal of not going into academia, and enrolled in Emory’s business program,” Sridharan says. “When I first arrived, I took a financial accounting course with a great instructor who made it so interesting. I became a T.A., and later T.A.’d several other accounting courses with other members of the faculty. That’s when I started thinking about an academic career.”
After Emory, Sridharan earned her Ph.D. at Stanford and honed her research interests, which include financial reporting and corporate research strategies and their implications on risk assessment and valuation. She says the occasional lack of continuity between accounting research and classroom instruction feeds into the stereotype that accounting is a bit dry. “My research looks at how investors use corporate disclosure,” Sridharan says. “These are fundamental questions, but sometimes its hard to think about these things when you’re just doing journal entries.”
A newcomer to Southern California, Sridharan says she loves being at UCLA Anderson, the strength of the faculty, and the opportunity to work closely with her fellow accounting professors and finance faculty as well. “I’ve lived in three areas of the country and feel UCLA has some really distinct advantages,” Sridharan says. “It’s in the center of the country’s second largest city, where people are doing a lot of different things. Part of business school is exploration and being open. UCLA Anderson offers a broad set of opportunities, and Los Angeles does as well.”
Sridharan is currently teaching Financial Accounting, one of the core courses at UCLA Anderson.
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