Because of scholarships, Larisa Morace was able to study abroad and just received a job offer following graduation.
By her junior year, Larisa Morace knew nursing was not for her.
What she didn’t know was that she’d eventually receive a job offer from PricewaterhouseCoopers in Nashville, even before graduating from the Master of Accountancy (MAcc) program in the Haslam College of Business.
“When I first started college, all I knew was that I loved math, but that my mom, sister, cousins, and aunts had all been nurses,” Morace says. “I enjoyed the nursing coursework, but when I got to clinicals I found that I wasn’t comfortable with the work.”
Unsure of what to do, Morace withdrew from school and became a preschool teacher. Then she met her husband, a veteran and superintendent for commercial construction, and the couple started a family while following his work to job sites around the country—Washington, DC, North Carolina, Ohio, and Kentucky.”
“We were kind of all over the place for a few years, but both kids were born in Tennessee,” Morace says. “Wherever we were, I would drive home for checkups and appointments. I had a home base, a hospital I knew, and my family here.”
Eventually, Morace began to think about picking up where she’d left off. She was unsure of where to apply her math skills, but wanted to find out. So, she came back to UT and spoke with an advisor who encouraged her to enroll in the core curriculum at Haslam College of Business. It was an instant match.
“Accounting just stuck with me,” Morace says. “Earning my undergraduate degree has been difficult—especially when my husband has had to travel out of state; every night I’d get the kids to bed and just study—but both my mom and mother-in-law live in Knoxville, and they’d literally take shifts to help me out.”
I studied abroad in Argentina and Uruguay during spring break. I’d never been out of the country before, and couldn’t have gone without scholarships.
– Larisa Morace, (’19)
Scholarships made a difference as well.
“I studied abroad in Argentina and Uruguay during spring break,” Morace says, smiling as she recalls the experience. “I’d never been out of the country before, and couldn’t have gone without the scholarships. I had the best time.
“We spent an entire day on a ranch and got to ride horses. I hadn’t known that cowboys and cattle ranching was a thing in Argentina. We also went on a lot of business site visits, and I especially liked going to EY in Buenos Aires. Seeing them doing the exact same kind of accounting work but in a completely different cultural context was so cool.”
That study abroad experience combined with the level of career support Haslam offers put Morace in the running for a job with PricewaterhouseCoopers. She describes a recruiting process complete with coaching, one-on-one resume workshops, and career fairs stacked with top employers. Shortly before entering the MAcc, Morace spent 10 weeks as an intern at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“It’s been a truly amazing and supportive process, and especially now that I’ve graduated with my bachelor’s I feel so proud to have a degree from UT and to be doing the MAcc. It’s a prestigious program, and the business school is booming with opportunities.”
Having followed a path of some uncertainty, some surprises, and plenty of challenges, Morace says UT offered to her support and caring as she found her way.
“Now I have a job offer from this great firm, and I couldn’t be happier about it,” Morace says. “I just got my offer letter earlier this week, actually.”
