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

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All of the Big Four accounting firms recruit at UTSA even though only three of them have offices in SanAntonio. In addition, such nationally prominent firms as Union Pacific Railroad, Cargill and Nestle Purinacome to UTSA specifically because of the diversity of our student pool.The Department of Accounting continues to receive strong community support. We havecreated an Advisory Board of nearly 20 accounting professionals from throughout the accountingcommunity. Almost all are alumni and nearly 95% support the department financially. Through ourCorporate Sponsor Program we have been able to raise over $40,000 in discretionary funds each of thelast four years. We have also raised nearly $30,000 a year in scholarships for accounting majors. Thiswill be the 30 th year that we have sponsored an annual Scholarship and Awards Program. Our mostrecent Kathy Keil Memorial Golf Tournament added over $30,000 to our endowed scholarship fund.This event was entirely run by our alumni supporters.The relatively short history of UTSA represents a disadvantage that both the Department ofAccounting and the College of Business must overcome. We strive mightily to educate the employersand the public about the high quality of our programs. Because of their long standing traditions,reputations and alumni loyalty, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University enjoyexceedingly strong support in the State of Texas and the city of San Antonio. There exists an underlyingreputation associated with the accounting graduates of those schools that we must constantly address.The quality of UTSA graduates and faculty are often unfairly discounted relative to those twouniversities because of this bias. However, we have recently been receiving considerable attention fromemployers because of the high-quality work ethic displayed by our graduates, many of whom are firstgenerationgraduates. This has resulted in Big Four offices from both Dallas and Houston coming to ourcampus to recruit accounting majors.We still are significantly underfunded relative to our competitor schools in the state. We haveused an endowment to establish the Ramsdell Chair in Accounting, a $500,000 chair. Because the chairis funded at a relatively low level, and because our salaries are significantly lower than at the premierprograms in Texas, we have had a difficult time finding a qualified scholar who is willing to take thisposition. We are continuing to recruit aggressively and anticipate better results due to a recent 10%increase in the salary budgeted for the position.Like all public education programs in the United States we are suffering from low funding levels.Despite a significant growth in enrollment and the addition of a PhD program, we have not had anygrowth in faculty resources. As long as the current budget situation persists, we expect to continue toface this problem.What internal, environmental, or competitive forces challenge the applicant's future?Despite the challenges imposed by the current budget problems of the State of Texas, theDepartment of Accounting continues to strive to maintain a rigorous and challenging academic programthat will continue to produce graduates that are attractive to the employers of not only our region, butof the entire state and nation. Increasingly, we are also attracting international students to ourprograms both because of their reputation for quality and because accounting is recognized as aparticularly marketable skill in hard economic times.One particular challenge we continue to face is the large number of transfer students who donot take their accounting principles courses at UTSA. That number approached 50% of our upperdivisionstudents. The differences in background of the students entering our Intermediate Accounting Iclasses has, in the past, negatively impacted our ability to attain the skill level we desire of our students.Since Intermediate I is the foundation course for the entire upper-division curriculum, this problem hadthe potential to debase the quality of our entire program. We have successfully integrated a3
competency examination into our prerequisites for Intermediate Accounting I which has increased thequality and performance of the students in our upper-division accounting courses significantly.Due to space constrains, UTSA has had to increase freshman enrollment standards so that only55% of applicants for the most recent class were admitted. Prior to university raising standards, theCOB was the first college at UTSA to establish separate admissions requirements that exceed universityrequirements. With the increased quality of freshman admissions and the higher admissions standardsthe college already has in place, we anticipate receiving consistently high-quality students in our upperdivisioncourses.While the enrollment in our undergraduate programs mirrors the ethnic makeup of thecommunities we serve, the same cannot be said of our masters’ and PhD programs. It is imperative thatwe find a way to successfully generate master’s level enrollments that are ethnically proportional to ourundergraduate enrollments. Through our ongoing efforts we have raised the percentage of Hispanics inthe MACY program from 16% in Fall 2007 to 34% in Fall 2011.We have recently funded the Ernst and Young Opportunity Scholarships which are specificallygeared toward attracting high-quality minority students into the 150-hour MACY program. We plan toexpand on this. We are also aggressively encouraging our own master’s graduates to consider the PhDprogram. We have reached out to other schools in South Texas and have been active in the KPMG PhDProject in an effort to increase PhD program minority enrollment.One of the significant advantages of having a PhD program is that we have access to a muchwider set of quality faculty candidates than was previously the case. We have been able to develop atalented faulty that is one of the most ethnically and academically diverse in the country. One-third ofthe faculty is from ethnic and racial minorities and one-third is women. We have not been givenresources to expand our faculty despite significant enrollment growth. We also have not yet hired afaculty member for the Ramsdell Chair which is occupying the slot of a departed faculty member, andwe have to wait another two years to replace a faculty member on phased retirement. On the positiveside, we are going to be hiring a highly-qualified non-tenure-track faculty member who will be joiningthe faculty in the Fall 2012 semester.Providing an effective mechanism to allow students to become CPA ready in the face of thestate imposed 150-hour educational requirement continues to challenge us. Our undergraduateprogram requires only 24 semester hours of upper-division coursework. The faculty has chosen not tooffer sufficient undergraduate elective classes in the BBA degree program to allow a student to satisfythe 30-hour upper-division educational requirement to sit for the CPA exam. At the same time, we donot want to have our master’s or undergraduate degree programs to become transitory vehicles forstudents who simply want to meet the State Board requirements. Too often these students simply arechecking off boxes and not taking the courses seriously. Consequently, we do not allow any non-degreeseeking students to take graduate courses. We do allow non-degree seeking undergraduate students totake up to nine hours of elective undergraduate courses solely for the purpose of completing the CPArequirements. We do not allow any non-degree seeking student to take more than nine hours ofundergraduate upper-division accounting coursework.A longer running issue, the effects of which are not at all certain, is the creation of a secondstate university in San Antonio, Texas A&M-San Antonio. In addition, in response to the 150-houreducational requirement for the CPA examination, several local private schools including TrinityUniversity, Our Lady of the Lake University and the University of the Incarnate Word have developedaccounting master’s degree programs. What long-range impact this will have on our master’s programremains to be seen. We have decided to emphasize the quality and breadth of our accountingprograms. We believe we have established a strong base of support that will hold us in good stead inthe face of these new programs.4
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents1. Situational Ana
Page 5: time the number of on-campus reside
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 38 and 39: most undergraduate students were in
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
Page 88 and 89:
MACY Goal 3 Graduates of the Master
Page 90 and 91:
PhD-ACC Goal 2 Students will identi
Page 92:
PhD-ACC Goal 3Students will acquire
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