Fifth Year Maintenance Report - AACSB - The University of Texas at ...

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most undergraduate students were ineligible for internships. We also decided to raise the grade pointaverage required for an academic credit internship. Also, because we have a large number of workingand nontraditional students, full-time internships were not possible.In response to these changes, and desiring to have all students receive some exposure to theprofession, we implemented a practicum course as a requirement for all students who do not do a forcreditinternship at the undergraduate level. This experiential course requires students, after anorientation class, to work with a team as accounting consultants for small, mostly minority-ownedbusinesses. Working with the UTSA Small Business Development Center, clients are matched withstudents and the students must meet regularly with their clients and provide guidance in establishingand operating a functioning accounting system. Under the rules of the Texas State Board of PublicAccountancy this course is treated the same as an internship for-credit toward the qualification hours.The third major change in the curriculum was the introduction of a mandatory capstone coursefor all BBA accounting majors. Consistent with our desire to have a more focused undergraduateprogram the faculty determined there was a need for a capstone course that would address currentissues in financial reporting and also provide a unified exit experience for the majors. It was alsodecided that the AOL assessment examination would be given in this course which is taken in thestudent’s final semester. We are in the second year of this requirement. Based on AOL feedback fromthe first year, major changes were implemented in the course this semester to make it a broaderexperience.We would argue that our efforts have been successful in focusing the undergraduate program.All students are required to take the same nine courses. The only elective at this point is between thepracticum and an internship. Two other elective courses are currently offered but, they cannotsubstitute for any of the required courses. They are primarily being take by students who areattempting to meet the 30 semester hour upper-division course requirement to qualify for the CPAexamination, but who do not intend to pursue the master’s degree.Master of Accountancy (MACY)At the last visit of the Peer Review Team (PRT), the master’s level programs included a graduatecertificate program, a MBA concentration and a specialized master’s with two tracks. Based onrecommendations from the PRT and our faculty, the certificate program and the MBA concentrationwere eliminated and the MACY program was revamped. Consequently, the concentration in accountingwas discontinued with the next catalog revision.The specialized Master of Accountancy (MACY) program had two tracks, an accounting track anda taxation track. The two ran parallel but had significantly different course offerings and wereeffectively two different degrees. Since at that time all of the graduate tax courses were being taught byadjunct faculty members there was a significant difference in the commitments to the two programs.Given this situation, the two track system was eliminated. The guiding structure of the current programis illustrated in Table 6.135
Table 6.1The Structure of the Master of Accountancy ProgramTheoretical FoundationsDisciplinary FocusElectivesCapstoneACC 6003, Managerial Accounting Theory andACC 6013 Financial Accounting Theory12 Semester Hours of Accounting or TaxationCoursesNine Semester Hours of Accounting, Taxation,Finance or Information SystemsACC 6993 Integrative Seminar in AccountingAt present three disciplinary foci are being supported: Financial Accounting, Auditing andTaxation. Students are not required to declare a focus and can take 12 semester hours across disciplinesif they choose.To support this structure a new capstone course which draws heavily on professionals to teachspecific topics from their practices was created and a tenured faculty member was recruited to teachTax Research. A major issue in strengthening the master’s degree has been faculty availability. Despitethe rapid growth in size of the MACY no new faculty lines have been allocated. To allow for expansionof the program we have drawn heavily on courses from allied disciplines. Two finance graduate courses,Financial Statement Analysis and Corporate Valuation have been cross-listed with accounting. Thesesupport the financial accounting focus and also allow accounting students to prepare for the first sectionof the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) examination. Three information systems courses,Fundamentals of Information Assurance, Fundamentals of Cyber Forensics and Introduction to DataMining taught by faculty from the Department of Information Systems and Technology Managementwere cross-listed. At the present time we are developing a focus on healthcare accounting and haveadded two new courses to facilitate that effort.A final change that has been made to the MACY program is the special scheduling of threecourses to allow MACY students to complete full-time internships in the spring. Each spring threecourses are taught in a five-week format so that MACY students can complete a 10-week fulltimeinternship program.PhD ProgramThe PhD program in accounting at UTSA is a concentration in the PhD in BusinessAdministration. All students are required to take a standard set of common courses to satisfy thegeneral requirements for the degree. The program as initially envisioned by the department would havethe standard behavioral and financial accounting tracks. This approach resulted in excessive diffusion ofresources, and the department faculty chose to focus all research efforts in the department on archivalbased research. To this end, the set of courses allowed in the general requirements was expanded toallow graduate econometrics to be taken in lieu of a second research methods course that focused moreon behavioral research issues. One other addition to the general requirements was the addition of aDoctoral Teaching Seminar that is required of all PhD students in their first summer session on campusTwo major changes were made in the accounting concentration. First, was the creation of adirected elective, Archival Based Research in Accounting, that is also taken during the first summer36
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents1. Situational Ana
Page 5 and 6: time the number of on-campus reside
Page 7 and 8: competency examination into our pre
Page 9 and 10: 2. Progress Update on Concerns from
Page 11: The AOL program of the department i
Page 14 and 15: constituents both to assess their n
Page 16 and 17: U/COB Goal 2-2: Continue to partner
Page 18 and 19: One additional area which illustrat
Page 20 and 21: No new programs have been introduce
Page 22 and 23: provision for new PhD’s. One othe
Page 24 and 25: week of research assistance. The co
Page 26 and 27: 5. Participants: Address the follow
Page 28 and 29: program than the undergraduate prog
Page 30 and 31: We have had one truly outstanding p
Page 32 and 33: One tenure decision has been made s
Page 34 and 35: Figure 5.1FTE Faculty Fall 2006-Fal
Page 36 and 37: 6. Assurance of Learning: Address t
Page 40 and 41: session students are on campus. Thi
Page 42 and 43: Table 6.2BBA in Accounting Assessme
Page 44 and 45: Table 6.3BBA in Accounting Assessme
Page 46 and 47: Master of Accountancy ProgramThe le
Page 48 and 49: techniques was created and is requi
Page 50 and 51: 3. Journal ListThe faculty evaluati
Page 52 and 53: 1. Situational Analysis (None)APPEN
Page 54 and 55: The Department of Accounting is a c
Page 56 and 57: The Department of Accounting, as a
Page 58 and 59: Department of Accounting Goal 3.Sub
Page 60 and 61: Result: In ProgressMain Action:Seek
Page 62 and 63: 6. Department of Accounting Mission
Page 64 and 65: Department of AccountingStrategic P
Page 66 and 67: I. Strategic Planning ProcessThe De
Page 68 and 69: The UTSA Department of Accounting w
Page 70 and 71: Health/Technology ThematicCOB Goal
Page 72 and 73: 151617181920Improve facultyinfrastr
Page 74 and 75: Table 31-2:Five-Year Summary of Pee
Page 76 and 77: University of Texas at San Antonio
Page 78 and 79: Journal of Accounting and Public Po
Page 80 and 81: TABLE 9-1Summary of Faculty Suffici
Page 82 and 83: DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTINGTABLE 10-1:
Page 84 and 85: TABLE 10-2: CALCULATIONS RELATIVE T
Page 86 and 87: Table 6-4Assessment Alignment for M
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MACY Goal 3 Graduates of the Master
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PhD-ACC Goal 2 Students will identi
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PhD-ACC Goal 3Students will acquire
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