PricewaterhouseCoopers Center for Innovation in Professional Services

During the past two decades, the professional services industry has experienced dramatic growth and change, especially in the accounting and consulting professions. Dynamics such as faster-paced, lower-margin work have forced professional services firms to become increasingly innovative in how they leverage their top talent to deliver value-added, global client services in ways that are more efficient and effective than their competitors.

To address these challenges, the PricewaterhouseCoopers Center for Innovation in Professional Services emerged from the longstanding relationship between the McIntire School and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world's largest professional services organization. 

Objectives

With PricewaterhouseCoopers' support and McIntire's commitment to academic excellence, the Center seeks to advance the collective knowledge of professional services in three integrated ways:

• By sponsoring small, faculty-driven, student-centric programs throughout the academic year that are integrated into the McIntire curriculum, required for students, and open to all University members, 

• By actively engaging students, faculty, and targeted practitioners interested in sharing ideas on best practices within professional services through these student-centric programs, and

• By creating a Web infrastructure that disseminates program outcomes and other relevant content to a broader, professional services audience.

To achieve these objectives, the Center is sponsoring three faculty awards for planning and implementation of programs during the 2005-2006 academic year, which expose both McIntire and other University students and faculty to issues and innovations within relevant professional services domains. These new programs build on and supplement the three programs delivered during the previous academic year.

Center Director

Elizabeth K. Thurston
Assistant Professor in Commerce
434-924-0889
434-982-3073 fax