The Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants Educational Foundation has hit its $100,000 goal to launch a new scholarship encouraging and supporting underrepresented students in the pursuit of the CPA profession.
The Curtis C. Duke and Dr. Ruth Coles Harris Scholarship honors the first Black male and female CPAs in the state of Virginia. The scholarship will be awarded annually to a Black or African American Virginia college student, and the first recipient will be announced in June.
The VSCPA Educational Foundation began its campaign to launch the scholarship in 2021, the year of the Black CPA Centennial, which recognized 100 years since John Cromwell Jr. became the first Black CPA in the United States.
The need for more diversity in the CPA profession is significant. The newest statistics released from the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) 2021 Trends Report examining supply of accounting graduates and demand for public accounting recruits reveal only 7% of new accounting graduates are Black.
The Duke-Harris Scholarship is just one of several scholarships the Educational Foundation offers to support the pipeline of minority students into the CPA profession, including the Samuel A. Derieux, CPA, Memorial Scholarship, the Thomas M. Berry Jr. Scholarship, the VSCPA Past Presidents Scholarship, and several minority undergraduate and graduate awards. Recipients of all the Foundation’s scholarships are announced in June; scholarships range from $1500 to $3000, with a nearly $60,000 awarded in 2021 to 26 deserving students.
“Over the past few years, the VSCPA has demonstrated a strong commitment to increasing the diversity of the CPA profession, through our Foundation and other diversity-related initiatives,” said VSCPA President & CEO Stephanie Peters, CAE. “It’s only fitting we launch a new scholarship to recognize the pioneering Curtis Duke and Dr. Ruth Coles Harris. I’m so proud of our 2021 Board Chair Anne Hagen for spearheading this campaign and am grateful to our founding donors and the entire membership for recognizing this need and making the scholarship a reality.”
The VSCPA is undertaking other initiatives to support and increase minority students pursuing accounting as a career, such as:
- Providing volunteers for its CPAs in the Classroom program to promote the profession in schools around the state.
- Creating Accounting Career Experience videos that feature the career paths of several diverse CPAs.
- Sponsoring the Accounting Careers Awareness Program, an initiative of the Richmond Chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants.
Visit www.vscpa.com/Foundation to learn more about the Duke-Harris Scholarship and for information on all VSCPA Educational Foundation scholarships. For information on all the VSCPA’s DEI initiatives related to the CPA pipeline, visit www.vscpa.com/Diversity. For more information on the Black CPA Centennial, visit www.BlackCPACentennial.cpa.
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