Meet Our Instructors

Craig Bain, CPA, Ph.D. (FAR Instructor)

Craig Bain is a Professor of Accounting at Northern Arizona University. He received his B.S in Accounting at California State University Chico and his Ph.D. at Texas A&M. He has published in some of the top academic and practitioner journals in Accounting. During his time in Arizona, he has had the opportunity to serve on the Board of Directors for several different companies and was named the Arizona Society of CPAs Accounting Professor of the year in Arizona. His teaching interests lie in the FAR accounting courses, where he has won awards from NAU and recognition from his students.

Dr. Bain is also an avid outdoorsman. He has fished in many places in the USA as well as other countries. He backpacks as often as possible and has done unsupported solo trips of 20+ days in the wilderness.

Kathleen Hill, CPA (BEC Instructor)

Kathleen Hill, BEC Mentor, holds an MBA in Accounting, a CPA, and has 20+ years in-industry experience, primarily as Controller within the Manufacturing, Construction, and Agricultural industries. She has also taught classes as an adjunct instructor in financial, managerial, and tax accounting within the OK State Higher Education System. During her career as Controller, she led her team in obtaining a $3MM award in payroll tax savings under the OK State Economic Incentive Program and was also instrumental in the design of an escheatment reporting program for her division, which was adopted by the organization as a whole, saving over $500,000 in fines. Kathleen is also the recipient of the Royal E. Knight Graduate Accounting in Excellence Award for her graduating class of 2011.

Hui Lin

Hui Lin is an Associate Professor of Accountancy & MIS in the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University and the Director of the School of Accountancy & MIS. She also serves as the Director of Driehaus Center for International Business. Her research has been published at leading academic journals in the fields of Accounting and Information Systems such as Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Computer Information Systems, Behavioral Research in Accounting, Information & Management, and Computers in Human Behavior. She has also published in practitioner journals including Internal Auditor and the ISACA journal. Dr. Lin is an award-winning instructor at DePaul and currently teaches financial accounting and accounting information systems courses at DePaul University. She received her PhD in accounting and information systems from Virginia Tech in 2008. Prior to her academic career, Lin worked as a business consultant specializing in ERP system implementations at Arthur Andersen and BearingPoint consulting in the greater Washington DC area.

Kari Joseph Olsen, Ph.D., CPA, CMA

Kari Joseph Olsen, Ph.D., CPA, CMA is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Utah Valley University and has published research on management control systems and personality characteristics in the The Accounting Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of the America Taxation Association, and in Issues in Accounting Education. He teaches management accounting, and his research interests are in management control systems, performance feedback, and personality characteristics. Through his years of teaching, he has received various awards, including the UVU MBA Outstanding Faculty award (2019), the USC Mary Pickford Foundation Doctoral Teaching Award (2014), and the USC Marshall Ph.D. Teaching Award (2013).

Participant: I became a CMA initially. This may sound cheesy but my professor at BYU was Monte Swain. I worked as his research assistant and I’d see his business card lying in the office and had
Monte Swain, Ph.D., CPA, CMA. I said I want nine letters behind my name. What I do is created a profile for me of where I could fit professionally, the Ph.D. so that I would be a researcher involved in academia. But the professional credentials were important, the CPA, especially the CMA because that’s where I was going to teach management accounting. I wanted credibility with my students.

I wanted to know what they would go through as I help prepare them for those professional certifications. It also helps me connect to large professional organizations, such as the Institute of Management Accountants. That’s been important for my career because they provide two things for me. One is a research grant. They want practice-based research and my research fits. I’ve received some research grants for them, which has been nice to support my research and get a little stipend money. Secondly, related to that it gives me an avenue to connect to practitioners.

They ask as part of our grants to write a practitioner article as published in their strategic finance practitioner magazine. That’s allowed me to connect with the profession and understand what’s happening in the management accounting world. That then in turn informs my research. It’s a symbiotic relationship and it’s very useful to me to have a CMA.

Tamara Phelan, MBA, CPA, CMA (BEC Instructor)

Tamara Phelan is an Instructor in the Department of Accountancy at Northern Illinois University, and she received her MM from Northwestern University in Finance and Marketing.

Tamara Phelan: Hello, I am Tamara Phelan. I am a CPA and a CMA. Currently, I am an instructor of Managerial Accounting at Northern Illinois University. I also run the Academic Internship Program there.

I started in cost accounting at a steel mill in Chicago, worked there for many years, and then I moved on to the consulting practice at EY. I had a wonderful experience there, and my last several years were as a partner in that practice. I truly do love managerial accounting, and I think everyone should understand it.

I earned my CPA license a little later in life, so I can truly appreciate how difficult and challenging it can be to prepare for this exam. I am so pleased to share my knowledge and experience with you via CPAexcel, because this product gives you the tools to be successful in your journey. Best wishes.

Robert A. Prentice, J.D. (AUD, BEC, REG Instructor)

Robert A. Prentice is the Ed and Molly Smith Centennial Professor in Business Law and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the J.D. McCombs School of Business at University of Texas. He received his B.A. from the University of Kansas and his J.D. from Washburn University. His research and teaching interests include partnership and corporate law, securities regulation, and the legal liability of accountants.

Coming Soon

Donald E. Tidrick, Ph.D., MBA, CPA, CMA, CIA (AUD Instructor)

Don Tidrick is Professor Emeritus (and former Deloitte Professor) in the Department of Accountancy at Northern Illinois University, where he was a distinguished member of the faculty since 2000. Prior to that, he was the Associate Chair and Director of the Professional Program in Accounting at the University of Texas at Austin. He began his academic career at the University of Notre Dame after earning his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. He also earned his bachelor’s degree in accounting from Ohio State followed by an MBA degree from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Prior to entering the doctoral program at OSU, he was an auditing professional in the firm now known as KPMG. He is an author and video lecturer for UWorld CPA Review’s Auditing and Attestation course. A recipient of numerous awards, he was honored to have received the AICPA’s Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education Award and the Illinois CPA Society’s Outstanding Accounting Educator Award.

Donald E. Tidrick: Hello, my name is Don Tidrick. I’m the Deloitte Professor of Accountancy at Northern Illinois University. Something that I hope might come across through these video lessons to you is that I have a passion for being a CPA. I think it’s an awesome profession. And one thing you’ll never hear me say is the accounting industry. It’s not an industry. It’s a profession. And when we put someone else’s interests ahead of our own personal interests, when we put the public interest first, when we put the profession’s interests ahead of our individual self-interest, we have the right to call ourselves a profession.

I’m very proud to have been a CPA now for several decades. And one of the things that I want very much is to help you realize your dream, your aspiration of becoming a CPA. Look, this is very doable. It’s still fundamentally an academic exam. And so as we go through these technical topics while at CPAexcel we’ll help you sort of distill this enormous volume of subject matter into bite-sized lessons that by putting forth a good faith effort, you too can pass the CPA exam and enjoy being a CPA.

Suzanne Youngberg, CPA, MST (REG Instructor)

Suzanne Youngberg is an accountancy instructor at Northern Illinois University teaching taxation at the undergraduate and graduate level. She has previously taught continuing professional education training for a large public accounting firm and in NIU’s CPA Review Program. She currently teaches the 11th hour product and in the Virtual Classroom for the REG portion of UWorld CPA Review. She is also currently co-authoring a tax textbook for UWorld with Dr. Greg Carnes. Suzanne has maintained her own tax practice for 29 years in the Chicago suburbs. Her publications have focused on individual taxation. Suzanne is an avid sports fan following her favorite Chicago teams.