Professor of Accounting

Phone: 994-4620
Office: 429 Reid Hall
Email: See COB Directory

Curriculum Vita

Dr. Bonita Peterson Kramer

Bonita K. Peterson Kramer is a Professor of Accounting in the College of Business.  She returned to her home state of Montana and joined the MSU faculty in 1994 after earning her Ph.D. from Washington State University.  She also holds an M.B.A. from the University of Montana and a B.S. from Montana State University.  Her accounting work experience includes three years as an auditor with KPMG in Texas and the Montana Office of the Legislative Auditor, in addition to several summers as an accountant in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming and Denali National Park, Alaska.  Dr. Kramer is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), and a Certified Management Accountant (CMA).

She has taught courses from the sophomore through graduate levels, including courses in auditing, financial accounting, fraud examination, accounting information systems, and cost accounting.  Dr. Kramer has been a recipient of several teaching awards, including the Montana Society of CPAs Outstanding Educator Award in 2003, and is responsible for preparing graduate students for the auditing section of the CPA Exam.  Her students ranked #2, #1, and #3 in the country for their first-time pass rate on the auditing portion of the exam the first three years she taught auditing (2001 – 2003) when the CPA Exam was not computerized.  (Subsequent pass rate rankings upon computerization of the CPA Exam in 2004 are not available.)

Her research focuses on accounting education, typically with an emphasis on fraud.  She has published articles in several accounting academic and practitioner journals including the Journal of Forensic Accounting, Behavioral Research in Accounting, Journal of Forensic Studies in Accounting and Business, Issues in Accounting Education, Journal of Accounting Education, Advances in Accounting Education, Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, The Journal of Accounting Case Research, Journal of the Academy of Business Education, The Accounting Educators’ Journal, Journal of Financial Crime, Management Accounting Quarterly, Accounting Perspectives, The CPA Journal, Strategic Finance, Internal Auditor, and The Journal of Accountancy.  Her articles have won national and regional recognition, including Certificates of Merit from the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) in 2009, 2005, and 2004, and the 2000 American Accounting Association Western Region Best Education Paper Award.  In both 2006 and 1998, her articles won the IMA’s Lybrand Bronze Medal.

In 2009, Dr. Kramer co-authored Financial Statements DeMystified with Professor Christie Johnson, part of an extensive book series by McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.  That same year they also co-authored a chapter on the demise of Arthur Andersen & Co. in Handbook of Frauds, Scams, and Swindles: Failures of Ethics in Leadership, published by Taylor & Francis Group.

Dr. Kramer has written questions that the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Institute of Internal Auditors have used on the CPA and CIA Exams, in addition to recently serving as a member of the IMA’s CMA Exam Review Committee.  She has served as a member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Higher Education Committee, the AICPA’s Professor/Practitioner Case Development Program Task Force, and the AICPA’s John L. Carey Scholarship Task Force. For nine years she was a member of the editorial review board of the Journal of Forensic Accounting, and is currently on the review board of the Journal of Forensic Studies in Accounting and Business.

Since 2002, Dr. Kramer has been the Scott and Barbara Heck Faculty Scholar in the College of Business.  In 2004, she received the MSU Cox Family Fund for Excellence Faculty Award.  In her free time, Dr. Kramer enjoys spending time in the outdoors with her husband, two young sons, and always accompanied by their two dogs.