New School of Accountancy Assistant Professor Travis Holt comes to Auburn from Tennessee-Chattanooga.

The Harbert College School of Accountancy needed a bridge class between Accounting Information Systems and Auditing. To fill the gap, the class Business Processes and Internal Controls was introduced to Harbert College students this fall.

But who will teach this new class?

To fill that gap, the Harbert College of Business hired Assistant Professor Travis Holt, 2012-13 recipient of the Beta Alpha Psi Outstanding Professor Award at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he taught graduate and undergraduate-level auditing and financial accounting courses.

“I want students to get a better understanding for the business processes within a company and how those processes affect the company’s systems – particularly from an accounting perspective – including identifying controls within those organizations,” Holt said, “and to gain understanding into how businesses views risks and how they attempt to mitigate those risks with internal controls.”

What is the class Business Processes and Internal Controls?

“It lets students understand the processes that go on inside a business organization and identifies the controls within those processes that businesses put in place to try to prevent and detect fraud and errors in both manual and computerized systems,” Holt added.

Holt comes to Auburn as an accomplished researcher. His work has been published in various journals, including Accounting, Organizations, and Society; Accounting Horizons; International Journal of Auditing; Managerial Auditing Journal; and The CPA Journal.

School of Accountancy Director DeWayne Searcy described Holt as “proven.”

“During his time at UTC he proved himself to be a top-notch researcher by publishing in one of the elite accounting journals, among others,” Searcy said. “He proved himself an effective teacher with very high and consistent student evaluations. When the faculty evaluated all of the candidates, Travis’ application easily rose to the top. We are fortunate to have Travis at Auburn.”

Holt, an avid SEC football fan, grew up in Tuscumbia, Ala., and nearly accepted an engineering scholarship at Auburn before ultimately pursuing his undergraduate at the University of North Alabama.

“I switched majors seven times,” he said.

And then he found accounting. Holt received his B.S. in Accounting from UNA in 2000, earned a MAcc at the University of Alabama the following year and later received his doctorate at Alabama in 2009.

“I found that I had a passion for accounting,” he said. “You need to find something that you are good at, but also something that you enjoy. It is possible to enjoy accounting.”

“Being from Alabama, I knew the quality institution that Auburn is. When I found out that there was an opportunity, I went for it. Ultimately what brought me here were the people. I’m glad to be back at a place with a traditional campus feel, and this is one of the best.”