Master of Accounting Curriculum

Orientations

June mini-orientation (half day)

Attendance is optional, but encouraged. All incoming students, including those unable to attend, receive copies of the material covered and the summer assignment.

We focus on how graduate school is different from undergraduate school in terms curriculum, increasing student responsibility and maturity and attire and attitude.
Course scheduling and program overview is covered.
The college’s career services staff begins their interaction with the incoming class by introducing their center’s services and covering the summer assignment. Students arrange meetings (either in-person or remotely) with staff during the summer to discuss resume revision as well as interview preparation.
The summer interaction with career services is a required element of the MAcc program.

September Orientation

Four days, the week prior to classes beginning. Attendance is required.

Day One (half day):

Reconnect with Career Services
Team building exercises with the Lundquist College’s Leadership and Communication faculty

On the first day, you'll begin to learn all of your classmates names and by the end of the second day, you will know them and a lot about them.

Day Two (all day):

Ropes course at Spencer’s Butte Challenge Course—facilitated by Challenge Course staff and college faculty

The Challenge Course emphasizes working together, learning to communicate with each other, and getting tasks done together. While physical, the mental aspect of problem solving is front and center. The afternoon is spent taking on challenges high up in the trees, physically and mentally supporting your classmates as they seek to go beyond what they ever thought they could. The day culminates in the entire class achieving a task together under a lot of time pressure that requires organization, understanding the rules, and deciding who is going to lead and follow.

Students have commented on how much they have learned about each other. This discovery and achieving together is the heart of this experience. And it is the kick-off point for repeated cycles of reaching, discovering, and achieving that define the Master of Accounting program.

Day Three (all day and evening):

Finance boot camp taught by finance faculty
Receptions with major recruiters

Day Four (all day and evening):

Finance Boot Camp concluded
Receptions with major recruiters

Core Courses

Five required four-credit courses and two one-credit professional development seminars

ACTG 617 Taxation of Business: Topics covered in the class include: basic structure of federal tax law as it applies to corporations and shareholders; tax and economic consequences of the creation, operation and liquidation of a corporation; tax and economic consequences of withdrawals, payments or distributions of assets from corporations; tax and economic consequences of a reorganization; reasons for and rules regarding consolidated tax returns; and theory and application of accounting for corporate income taxes under financial accounting rules.

ACTG 618 Taxes and Business Strategy focuses on the importance of tax considerations in making business decisions. Objectives for the course are to develop and apply a theoretical tax-planning framework that considers implications of a transaction on all parties, considers all explicit and implicit taxes, and all costs necessary to implement any tax plans. Among topics considered in the framework are how taxes are accounted for, the organizational form of the entity, the importance of tax planning and nontax costs. After understanding the framework, the course applies these concepts to specific decision contexts such as compensation plans, multinational tax planning, and mergers and acquisitions. At the conclusion of the class students should be able to apply a framework to future decisions dealing with taxes, even as tax laws themselves continue to change.

ACTG 630 Accounting Measurement and Disclosure focuses on what problems public reporting of information solves, what problems it creates and how these problems can be mitigated. The foundation of both why we have publicly available financial reporting and the problems that result from such public reporting is the concept of information asymmetry. Along the way, the course discusses fair value accounting vs. historical cost, reserve recognition accounting, earnings quality and management, principles vs. rules based accounting and the role and functioning of the SEC and other accounting regulatory bodies.

ACTG 631 Financial statement analysis is part of business analysis. It encompasses the evaluation of a company's past performance and risk as well as prediction of future performance and risk. This analysis may be useful for financial decisions such as equity valuation, debt valuation, credit risk assessment, etc. This course is designed to give preparers and users of financial information a framework for business analysis and valuation using financial statement data. Students will apply this framework to a variety of business decisions. The course covers many of the techniques commonly used to analyze financial statements including disclosure analysis, financial ratios, cash flow analysis, forecasting, and valuation methods. At the end of the course students will have

An understanding of how business events are reflected in financial statements
Literacy in reading 10-Ks and 10-Qs
A working knowledge of the residual income valuation model
Experience in applying asset pricing and valuation theories to business decisions.

ACTG 662 Strategic Cost Management is an advanced graduate class melding strategic issues, mathematical models, and management accounting. At the end of this class students should understand how cost information supports the creation and implementation of corporate strategies. The course uses many cases and emphasizes decision-making in a complex and ambiguous environment. Specific topics covered are customer profitability analysis, value chain and activity based management, costs of quality, environmental cost management, the theory of constraints and capacity decisions, transfer pricing, and evaluating performance via the balanced scorecard. Students explore the topics both from the view of applied use of these concepts and also academic research.

ACTG 610 Developing the Business Professional Seminars (two one-credit seminars) cover topics essential for an accounting professional to be aware of but not covered in the academic courses. Activities/topics covered vary from term to term and year to year depending upon but typically include choosing appropriate attire by occasion, resume development and interview preparation, team building exercises including a ropes course, attendance at a variety of professional events, lectures on topics such including client confidentiality, proper communication etiquette, employee legal rights and managing your career path. Typically one of the seminars focuses on an emerging area for accountants such as Corporate Responsibility reports where there is significant engagement with professionals and practice of the etiquette and communication skills.

Accounting Electives

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.