Select two of the following four-credit courses
ACTG 642 Advanced Assurance Services focuses on advanced auditing and approaching auditing from a case method, the course covers new trends toward assurance services. The course considers professional roles in auditing, auditing standards, risk assessment, enterprise risk management, internal controls, and broader roles for the auditor in oversight, governance, and accountability.
ACTG 610 International Accounting This course is designed to expose student to the international aspects of accounting and financial management so that they can know how to use information from foreign financial statements to make decisions, be familiar with measurement and disclosure issues, and understand the international convergence of financial reporting. It addresses intermediate and advanced financial reporting topics including includes examining the financial (US GAAP) and tax consequences of cross-border transactions; developing an understanding of non-GAAP accounting standards and their implications for financial statement analysis including translations and the treatment of foreign currency transactions and exchange risk; and understanding the implications of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on US companies. Students apply these concepts through cases and a financial statement project.
ACTG 610 Taxation of Pass-Through Entities is an introduction to the taxation of pass-through entities - S corporations and partnerships (including limited liability companies) as they form, operate and dissolve. In addition, an understanding of the tax research process including the hierarchy of research authority, issue identification/framing of “the question(s)”, identification and evaluation of relevant authoritative materials, and the presentation of findings.
General Business or Other Graduate Electives
Select five of three-or four-credit courses. Frequently selected electives are below.
ACTG 625 Financial Reporting This is a great course for MAcc students who wish to refresh their Intermediate Accounting knowledge and to develop a deeper understanding of how financial accounting is used by users. As such, we will focus on two primary objectives. The first is to provide students with the technical knowledge necessary to understand the financial reporting system and the numbers produced by that system. The second is to provide students with an understanding of the context within which the financial statement numbers are used. Focused attention will be placed on issues in revenue recognition, receivables, leases, pensions, investments, income taxes, and cash flows. IFRS and US GAAP comparisons are integrated into the course as well. Finally we will spend some time reviewing research linking financial reporting numbers to executive compensation. This course is user-focused rather than preparer-focused and thus is essential for any student who has an interest in a career in which financial statement information is an important ingredient to decisions.
OBA 533 Information Analysis for Managerial Decisions teaches techniques to develop information to manage risk and improve decisions. These techniques include data-driven approaches for discovering business trends and strategic opportunities, including techniques for data-mining and analyzing empirical data.
OBA 544 Business Database Management Systems covers techniques for structuring and storing business data which focuses primarily on relational database theory, with applied skills for business users, including data warehouses, reporting, and normalization.
FIN 663 International Financial Management & Investments This course is intended to foster an understanding of the financial management decisions that firms face in the international environment. A key focus of the class is to ensure that students understand determinants of exchange rate and how to analyze corporate exposure to exchange rate risk. Some of the topics that will be discussed in the course are: globalization and the ongoing free trade debate, balance of payment fundamentals such as capital flows, country debt and exchange rate fluctuations; foreign exchange rate risk and hedging, international diversification, international portfolio management, valuation in an international context and, international capital budgeting (repetitive) and barriers to international capital flows. This class is appropriate for students who are interested in careers in corporate finance for multinational firms, treasury, or investment or portfolio management.
FIN683 Investments This course follows FIN610 Corporate Finance which covers the traditional investment topics of portfolio theory, market efficiency, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model. This course builds on this foundation by focusing on major types of investments, with a focus on equity and fixed income markets. The class may also consider mutual funds and options, stocks and bonds. In order to develop a way of thinking about and framing investment decisions, the measuring of risk, and the relation between risk and expected return, and security analysis will be key themes. We will also broadly consider the extent to which financial markets are informationally efficient, in other words, the extent to which financial assets are or are not correctly priced. Topics include capital asset pricing vs. arbitrage pricing theory, risk sources vs. risk return, fundamental analysis and valuation.
MGMT 620 Managing Global Business To some globalization represents a threat; to others it represents an opportunity. In either case, managers must be prepared to work effectively with people and companies from highly divergent cultural backgrounds if they are to succeed in an increasingly competitive global business environment. With this in mind, this course examines the challenges of working and managing across cultures. Taking a comparative approach, we examine how basic organization and management processes can differ across borders, as well as various management strategies for accommodating these differences. Culture and cultural differences represents the starting point for our analyses; implications for global managers represent the conclusion. Emphasis is also given to developing the global management skills necessary to survive and succeed in the new global economy.
MGMT 623 Negotiation Negotiation theory including distributive and integrative bargaining techniques, economic complements, game theory, and alternative dispute resolution. Extensive in-class negotiation simulations.
MGMT 625 New Venture Planning Student teams identify and research a business opportunity; develop and present a professional start-up business plan that includes market, competitor, cash flow, and financial analyses.
