Margaret Christ, who holds the J.M. Tull Chair in Accounting, is the new director of the J.M. Tull School of Accounting at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business. Her appointment takes effect July 1.
Christ succeeds Ted Christensen, who is returning to full-time teaching and research after serving as the school’s director since 2015. Christensen came to UGA from Brigham Young University and was named to the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Distinguished Chair of Business Administration.
“The Tull School of Accounting has expanded its programs offerings and partnerships and increased enrollment, and I’m grateful to Ted for his outstanding leadership as the school’s director,” said Dean Ben Ayers. “I am confident that the Tull School will remain at the forefront of accounting education, scholarship and professional service under Margaret’s leadership. Accounting students can expect incredible opportunities to learn and be in a great position for career success when they graduate.”
Christ came to UGA in 2008 as an assistant professor after graduating from the University of Texas with a PhD in accounting.
Her research focuses on business control systems and internal audit practices. She recently launched a line of inquiry into how artificial intelligence and data analytics tools impact human judgment during auditing.
That work has informed her teaching and helped her develop an evolving curriculum and class materials used in accounting programs across the U.S. They focus on the use of data analytics and data visualization techniques across all accounting domains.
“My objective is for accounting students to develop an analytics mindset — the ability to think critically about a business issue and identify a way to analyze it to solve a problem,” Christ said.
To help students cultivate that mindset, Christ developed numerous teaching cases and curriculum materials in conjunction with the EY Academic Resource Center. She and her co-authors won the 2020 Innovation in Accounting Education Award from the American Accounting Association (AAA) for their collective efforts. The case materials have been used by thousands of accounting instructors at more than 800 institutions around the world.
Christ received Terry’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2021 and a Creative Teaching Award from UGA in 2018. She was inducted into membership in UGA’s Teaching Academy in 2017.
In addition to her work at UGA, Christ serves as the American Accounting Association’s vice president for finance and as an editor for Accounting Horizons. She has previously served as an editor for Accounting Review and the Journal of Management Accounting Research.