The reunion is 10 years in the making for Stephanie Grant. After completing her PhD in accounting at Illinois in 2016, where Brooke Elliott was chair of her dissertation committee, Grant returns to Gies College of Business as an associate professor of accountancy, rejoining Elliott, who starts her third year as Dean.

Since earning her PhD, Grant has spent the last decade in Seattle, moving up the ranks of the accounting department at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.

“Returning to Gies was a pretty easy decision,” Grant said. “I knew I wanted to do experimental accounting research and there isn’t a better place to do that than Illinois.”

Besides the professional appeal, Grant remembers how special the people were at Gies Business.

“There were five in my (PhD) cohort, and we were really close,” Grant recalled. “In going through the grueling coursework together and learning how to get our legs under us as academics, it was the people who made the experience for me.”

It was Elliott who helped define Grant’s career path.

“I came in thinking I was going to do audit research, then I TA’d for Brooke, who encouraged me to pursue financial research,” Grant said. “She took me under her wing and taught me most everything I know.”

Grant also noticed how much work Elliott was able to accomplish on her mobile device, which inspired her doctoral dissertation topic on how investors might make different decisions on their phone than their computer. It turns out that research was ahead of her time. Grant remembers that even in 2016, people were skeptical that investors would choose to make transactions on their phone. Fast forward 10 years, and the apps available to make investment decisions have exploded.

“No one would argue now that with apps like Robinhood, for example, retail investors are using their phones significantly more today,” Grant said.

Connections at Washington, which included colleagues she was already doing research with, helped lead Grant to UW to continue her academic career there.

“While it’s a smaller group, UW also has a reputation for being collegial and welcoming,” Grant said. “Plus, Seattle is pretty amazing.”

At UW, Grant worked closely with Frank Hodge, who is now the Orin & Janet Smith Dean of UW’s Foster School of Business.

“My mentors keep turning into deans,” Grant quipped.

Grant returned to campus for Elliott’s induction ceremony and isn’t surprised that she has grown into that role.

“When she was my advisor, I don’t think Brooke would verbalize that being a dean was her path, but I could definitely see it for her,” Grant said. “She is a visionary and always thinks big, so it was no surprise when Gies chose her to lead the college.”

Grant has developed a passion for delivering curriculum with inclusivity in mind. For instance, among Grant’s most recent working papers, “Gamified Feedback in Financial Education, ADHD, and Investment Decision-making” suggests that using gamification in financial education, with the proper guardrails, will enhance engagement for those with ADHD and, in the right circumstances, can improve future investment decision-making for them.

“There are so many retail investors entering the markets right now, and many of them don’t have the tools to be successful,” Grant said. “We are looking at ways to improve investor education, which will have the potential to lead to better investment decisions. At the same time, we want to make sure new educational features are also helpful for individuals with ADHD. We found that when we put up some guardrails and structures around the process, they applied their knowledge and made better decisions.”  

Although Grant has expanded her research focus, in some ways, she hasn’t veered far from her base. Some of her most recent work concludes that investors are more likely to make impulsive decisions when they swipe versus when they click to confirm a transaction.

“Swiping is just kind of fun, so much so that it doesn’t feel like you’re actually spending money,” Grant noted. “When you’re clicking and confirming something, it’s much more obvious that you’re spending money, and you realize how much you’re spending. When you’re swiping, that barrier disappears, so you just go for it.”

Prior to her time at Illinois and Washington, Grant was an Audit Senior Associate at Deloitte & Touche LLP in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the Business/Accounting Department Chair at Kaplan University. Family circumstances have led Grant to relocate to North Carolina, where, unlike in Seattle, she’ll need to drive a couple of hours to the coast to continue her passion for scuba diving and her search for Wrecks and Megalodon (an extinct shark) teeth.

Although Grant will mostly be able to work from the Tar Heel State, she will be on campus about every other week during the semester to teach an in-person experimental accounting seminar and to work with PhD students and junior faculty.

“Once I knew personally about the move, there was only one school that I thought of, and that was Illinois. It is clearly the best fit for how I think about accounting education and research,” Grant said.

A difference between Foster and Gies Business is its size; at UW, Grant was only one of two financial experimental faculty. She is looking forward to expanding that reach at Gies, where she is aware of several faculty members, such as Alex Vandenberg, Kim Mendoza, Cassie Mongold, and Sebastian Stirnkorb, who intersect with her research interests.

The move also reunites Grant with Elliott, who continues to influence her professional perspective.

“Brooke always encouraged me to be really innovative with my research even when others cautioned me that my ideas weren’t all that great,” Grant said. “She pushed me to do the things I was passionate about and really pursue these innovative ideas. That’s one of the things that drew me back to Illinois, just how innovative the school is from top to bottom.”