As a junior accounting major, Michael accepted the challenge of his Intermediate Accounting Professor to become an accounting tutor in order to fully develop his understanding of accounting principles and theory. "Teach what you need to learn the most," Harry Peery told him, assigning two of his students to Michael to tutor. As Mr. Peery had predicted, Michael deeply enjoyed his new instructional role.

This assignment began Michael's instructing career as an accounting tutor at the University of Mississippi, serving both private students and being employed by the Ole Miss Athletic Association as study hall accounting tutor. After two years of tutoring, as a graduate student, Michael became a classroom instructor teaching university classes in accounting at Ole Miss then at Texas A&M University. This experience helped to develop Michael's natural instructional ability and brought him success as a classroom instructor, teaching all levels of undergraduate accounting courses. Later, Michael was recruited to join the staff of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) as one of the first staff instructors in the IIA's Seminar Department.

Under the tutelage of several seasoned internal audit presenters (including his mentors: Tom Capps, Robert Atkisson, Sam Newman and Larry Sawyer), Michael developed into a world class seminar leader and presenter. He and Rick Balog, one of Michael's close friends and colleagues at the IIA, jointly developed and presented one of the earliest versions of the IIA's Instructor Development Course (IDC). They expanded the use of videotaping new instructors during their presentations to aid them in understanding the pragmatic concepts of physical environment, body language and other effective techniques. A version of Michael's and Rick's IDC was offered by the IIA for more than two decades and was just replaced by the IIA's new Facilitator Qualification Training & Audition.

Recently Michael created a new course entitled Effective Presentations Techniques (EPT), brining to the participants Michael's thirty plus years as an instructor and presenter. The course is centered around three major areas of presentation concepts: Behavioral; Perceptual; and Environmental Techniques. The course explores in detail the aspects of successful and effective presentations and instruction. Video recording is used to benchmark the participant's skills at the beginning of the course with a second recording accomplished at the end to establish progress using the techniques presented.

Many of Michael's participants in the presentations courses and the IIA's IDC course have become successful presenters and seminar leaders, several of them actually developed into professional and consulting instructors. Michael's approach to instructing and presentations are laced throughout all of the articles and commentaries of the Audit Java Training and Presentations secton.