New Professor Joins Hull College’s Accounting Faculty

The Hull College of Business welcomed Alex Hsiang-Chieh Yang, Ph.D., as a new assistant professor in accounting for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Yang comes to Augusta University from the University of British Columbia, where he was teaching and attaining his doctorate in accounting since 2015.

Yang said he was attracted to Augusta University because it is a rising research university.

Yang has two master’s degrees, one in accounting from National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, and another in statistics from Temple University in Philadelphia. His bachelor’s degree is in public finance from National Chengchi University, which he completed in 2007.

Yang was employed as an associate for Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Taiwan as an audit and tax expert before working as a management consultant.

A professor encouraged him to pursue the Ph.D. in order to have more time to do research. The first step was moving to the U.S. to obtain his masters in statistics. “I wasn’t equipped with enough quantitative skill to do accounting research,” he explained.

Yang began teaching while in Canada as he was pursuing his doctorate.

“Teaching and research can influence each other. Through communication with the students, I generated many of my good research questions,” he said. Research also helps a teacher by giving a deeper understanding of a topic.

Currently, he is researching earnings risks, bank accounting, and bank loan contracting.

Yang has not visited Taiwan since 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. He plans to return this Christmas. He and his wife, whom he met while in college for his first degree, have two children.

With a busy schedule as a father, professor, and researcher, he still has a few hobbies. One is rugby, which he began playing as an undergraduate. Rugby spawned his second hobby, weight training. Yang has not joined a commercial gym in the community, instead opting to construct one in his home.