Scholarship Recipient Heads Back to School With Goals in Tow

GUEST BLOGGER

Cora Bullock
Assistant Editor, Fraud Magazine

School has swung into action with the start of the fall semester. For Oral Roberts University student Monica Hostetler, it means another step closer to her dream of earning her CFE credential.

When Hostetler learned she had received the ACFE’s Ritchie-Jennings Memorial Scholarship in 2010, she was thrilled. She heard of the scholarship through one of her accounting professors at Oral Roberts and had applied. She sat at the same table as ACFE president Jim Ratley at ORU’s School of Business breakfast for her and past recipients and says that made receiving the scholarship even more special. The ACFE doesn’t just send in a check; it makes the effort to personally connect with these students, the future fraud-fighters of the world.

Hostetler was valedictorian of her high school in tiny Pratt, Kan. Her parents both attended ORU, and she always felt a special kinship with the university. Hearing about its great business school sealed the deal for her.

She is an accounting major on a fast track to earn her MBA by December 2012. She is a member of the Accounting Honor Society, an ORU Honors Program Scholar, student assistant in the ORU College of Business and is a team leader for the Children’s Medical Center Outreach. Oh, and in her spare time, she enjoys reading, playing the piano, running, cooking and spending time with her family.

Hostetler not only loved receiving the scholarship, she enjoyed the application process itself. “One of the application requirements was a recommendation from a Certified Fraud Examiner,” she said. “Through the course of obtaining a recommendation, I was given the opportunity to meet a CFE and learn much more about the certification and fraud investigation profession than I ever would have through my own research.”

After graduating, she plans to take the CPA exam as she will meet the required hours because of her MBA and concentration in accounting. After that, she wants to become an auditor. “Fraud examination is definitely of interest to me. As a result, I am still considering forensic accounting as a possible long-term career goal. Obtaining a CFE credential would be a primary objective for my career in forensic accounting,” she said.