“We Are GSM” Video - Meet Assistant Professor Paul Wong
Leveraging Nonprofit Experience for Financial Reporting
I'm an assistant professor of accounting here at UC Davis. My area of research within accounting is financial reporting.
So, this is like creating financial statements, looking at balance sheets and income statements, and trying to understand how users of financial information extract information, and then how that information informs their choices.
More recently I've been focusing on financial reporting within the nonprofit field, mostly because that is where I had my practitioner experience, leveraging my practitioner experience to inform more of my research.
Nonprofit Reporting and PPP Insights
My most recent publication was related to financial reporting and the Paycheck Protection Program. This is COVID pandemic-related research where the federal government provided support to small businesses through forgiven loans or potentially forgiven loans.
Nonprofits are required to file a tax form every year that is made public, and we were able to leverage those public filings to then look at financial information and determine what types of financial information led to a greater propensity of participation within the program.
The ultimate goal of some of this research is to inform legislators on who is participating in their program, why are they participating in their program, are there financial determinants of those who are participating so that legislators can be more informed and create programs that are more effective.
To be honest, I think it's really easy to bring in some of my research into class because many of us, if not all of us, have interacted with a nonprofit before, whether or not it's universities or a local charity.
Curiosity Drives Success at UC Davis
Students need to be curious. Students who come to UC Davis for graduate education are highly intelligent and very capable students.
But for me, the students who are most fun to teach and most fun to mentor are those who continue to express curiosity about the material, who will ask questions in class, who will ask questions outside of class, who come to office hours and engage with professors in mastering material.
Balancing Family, Fun and Skiing
So, I spend most of my time outside of work, with my two young kids, who are really fun, really active, but also require a lot of attention and energy. Enjoy this time because they grow up very quickly. Really after work, that's what I want to do most, is spend time with my kids and my wife.
Other than that, in the wintertime, I do love a quick ski trip up to Tahoe. My wife and I enjoy good food, good wine, good whiskey. We enjoy shows, and so we have a subscription to Broadway Sacramento. We have a network of really, really close friends that we tend to spend a lot of time with, travel with.
