Master of Accountancy and Analytics (MAcc) Courses

An in-depth study of management accounting techniques and methods needed for effective management of business enterprises. The trade-offs management makes in acquiring and using accounting information for decision-making and control are discussed. Specific topics include cost behavior and estimation, short-term decision-making, budgeting, performance evaluation, cost allocation, and product costing.

An examination of the nature of assurance services with an emphasis on evaluating the quality of information. Contemporary auditing techniques are explored with a focus on the entity’s control systems. Course covers advanced issues which arise in audit practice including audit reporting issues, fraud detection and reporting, attestation engagements, special reporting issues, compilation and review engagements, scope of services issues, and other new issues which have a significant impact in audit practice.

This course is designed to help students apply their accounting, auditing, information systems and communication skills and build the forensic and examination skills needed to detect financial fraud, perform litigation support services and prepare a case for criminal proceedings or civil litigation. These skills are highly valued in the rapidly growing field of forensic accounting.

An examination of the foundations and applications of accounting theory as it relates to financial accounting and reporting. The course draws upon existing research which provides evidence about the applicability of accounting theory to the financial reporting process for business enterprises which prepares financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

Students learn how to research complex tax issues and engage in complex tax planning. The focus of the course is the application of these skills to current tax issues facing accounting practitioners.

This course is designed to help students in their ethical obligations and decision making to meet their responsibilities under the professions’ code of conduct. These skills should help students ensure that their work meets the highest standards of integrity, independence and objectivity while understanding the challenges of ethical decision making by providing an examination of various ethical theories; identifying and resolving ethical dilemmas; the potential civil and criminal liability of accountants under both statutes and common law; civil and criminal liability in accounting practice; ethical issues and cases in accounting practice; issues and cases involving the Code of Professional Conduct. In addition, this course provides students theory and practice in oral and written communication involving practicing accountants.

This course is an application of the theory underlying financial accounting and reporting and the interrelationships between the different accounting sub-disciplines. Cases and problems are utilized to illustrate contemporary issues related to standard setting and financial statement measurement and reporting topics. Significant and rapid changes in accounting rules affect the financial reporting and analysis that management uses to make business decisions. This course explores contemporary accounting topics that accounting professionals face in the workplace and how the accompanying requirements change the way companies and their business partners use, report, analyze, and interpret financial data. Actual subjects covered vary as conditions change. This course serves as the Capstone Experience for our program. Specifically, this course provides a review of the material covered throughout the program and an opportunity to assess a student’s overall learning in the program.

Critical analysis and application of accounting principles, and building on those principles to maximize value creation. Bridging accounting and financial disciplines with strategic focus of an organization, and understanding the external forces impacting that particular organization.

This course studies the conceptual framework of accounting, disclosure standards for general purpose financial statements, and measurement standards for cash, receivables, inventories, tangible and intangible operating assets, investments, liabilities, and associated revenues and expenses, including application of compound interest techniques. Measurement and reporting standards for contingencies, stockholders’ equity, and special problems associated with revenue recognition are also studied.

This course studies advanced accounting topics in the following areas: Managerial Accounting, Cost Accounting, Taxation and Accounting Information Systems.

This course studies advanced accounting topics in the following areas: Auditing, Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination, Advanced Financial Accounting and Governmental/Not-for-Profit Accounting.

Managerial Finance is an integrated application of accounting and economic principles to the financial functions of business. The course covers financial analysis, basic investing concepts, risk and return, time value of money, capital structure, and capital budgeting.

Covers many of the key concepts and tools of operations management and will apply these to many of the issues faced by firms today.

Business analytics can be subcategorized into three primary fields of study. These fields include descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Descriptive analytics serves as a foundation to all other forms of analytics. The primary goal of this course is to provide students with the skills to effectively summarize, visualize, and manage data within software environments that are commonly used in various business contexts. In this course, topics include, but are not limited to, measures of central location, measures of dispersion, discrete and continuous probability distributions, hypothesis tests, as well as data visualization. In addition, students are introduced to predictive and prescriptive analytics topics for business applications.

Prescriptive analytics includes a variety of topics related to decision-making within the context of business problems and applications. The primary goal of this course is to develop a model of a business scenario within a software environment. Students employ mathematical techniques that support or automate a course of action that should be taken by decision-makers. In this hands-on course, students are introduced to concepts related to constructing, testing, and applying prescriptive models and techniques that are common in business settings. From this perspective, students utilize software tools in order to apply a variety of decision-making techniques, including optimization and simulation.

Information systems have always been a critical component of the successful operation and management of organizations. Today, modern information systems are pervasive, and knowledge of how they integrate into businesses to enhance strategies and processes is essential for all positions and functional areas. Advances in digital technologies have resulted in the development of information systems that are radically transforming the nature of managerial work, the structure of organizations, and the way firms operate and compete in the marketplace. Managers must, therefore, have a solid understanding of information technology, its organizational role, and strategic implications. Regardless of your profession or position, you have little choice but to accept and assume responsibility for the innovative and effective use of information technology to enhance your organization's performance. This course is designed to provide the fundamentals necessary to begin this process.

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical and machine learning techniques and applications within business environments. The primary goal of this course is to discover and apply relationships found within historic datasets in order to make predictions about the future or otherwise unknown events. In this hands-on course, students are introduced to concepts related to constructing, testing, and applying predictive models in various business settings. From this perspective, students utilize software tools in order to conduct an analysis of continuous, classification, and clustering models.

This course provides a broad overview of business intelligence and data management including database fundamentals, business intelligence approaches, data management/data governance strategies, data mining, and other business/data analytics techniques. Our primary emphasis will be on the managerial perspective, focusing on how you can design, implement, and leverage business intelligence systems and strategies in a management role.

In this course, students will be introduced to programming concepts that are used in business analytics. Understanding the fundamentals of programming is an essential skill set to implement solutions that are commonly needed in business practices. Common scenarios include the automation of processing data sets, applying methods, and combining techniques for creating solutions to solve business problems.

This course will provide students with the opportunity to learn more about how business analytics is being used in a variety of workplaces. The course will have a strategic and managerial focus where students will analyze many business cases. These cases will challenge students in their ability to critically evaluate the implications of business analytics.

This course requires students to apply advanced software tools that are commonly used in businesses for advanced modeling practices and visualization techniques. In particular, students will explore advanced techniques for pre-and post-processing datasets. Students will apply advanced visualization techniques to understand the data that they are investigating and to enhance their ability to communicate the results and implications of predictive models. Students are expected to demonstrate the skills learned in this class with a course project. The course project not only allows a student to improve problem-solving skills, but it can also enhance the student’s ability to communicate their findings and recommendations in a business context. PREREQUISITE: MBA 6390

Data is often either structured or unstructured. Unstructured data presents a challenge because standard techniques commonly used in business analytics cannot be used to discover meaningful patterns, relationships, and other insights that could be useful when solving business problems. In this course, students will learn advanced techniques while using software that is commonly used in practice to overcome the problems associated with unstructured data. PREREQUISITE: MBA 6395

This course is designed to help students develop and apply analytics concepts and critical thinking skills needed to use analytics for decision-making in the accounting profession. Data analytics and critical thinking skills are highly valued in the accounting profession. Upon completion of this course, students will understand the role of analytics in the accounting profession and demonstrate critical thinking when using analytics for accounting decision-making. Students will also be able to apply knowledge of data preparation, analytic techniques, visualization techniques, and basic skills in tools to extract data from accounting information systems and other sources and transform the data into useable information for accounting decision-making.