The Accounting Educator

The Newsletter of the Teaching and Curriculum Section
American Accounting Association
Vol. IX No. 2 - Winter 2000

Interim Committee Reports

All of our committees are working diligently this year. A sample of their current activities are summarized below.

Curriculum Committee
Hartwell C. Herring III, Chair reports: The Curriculum Committee is writing a short literature guide on the subject of Integrating Expanded Competencies into the Accounting Curriculum. The report will identify areas of study and approaches that can be used to give accounting education a broader business focus. A bibliography of useful articles and other sources will be incorporated into the report as well.

Introductory Accounting Sequence
Lynn Mazzola reports: Our charge is to investigate long distance learning in the first year of accounting. We anticipate doing a survey with follow up at those institutions that have long distance learning courses.

Committee members are: Lynn Mazzola, Nassau Community College, Chair, Steve Flynn, Thomas More College; Debra Kerby,Truman State University; and Glenn Owen, Alan Hancock College. Our committee is very small. If anyone would like to join us we would be delighted.

New Faculty Handbook Committee
Committee Members: Lynn Griffin, North Carolina A&T State University, Committee Chair; Rose Marie Bukics and Laura R. Ingraham, North Carolina State University; Leslie Kren, University of Wisconsin - Milwaulkee; Kathleen E. Sinning, Western Michigan University; Monte R. Swain, Brigham Young University

The first draft of the handbook has been sent to committee members for their review. Topics covered in the handbook are:

  • Accounting Resources on the Internet
  • Assessing Quality of Publication Outlets
  • A Chairperson's View of Tenure and Promotion at a Non-Accounting-Ph.D. Granting State University: The Case of Kansas State
  • Disabilities
  • Increasing Your Publication Success - An Editor's Perspective
  • Providing Services to Academic Professional Organizations
  • Research Advice
  • Students Say the Darnest Things

Other contributors to the handbook are: Hans J. Dykxhoorn; O. Finley Graves; Anthony Atkinson; Leslie D. Turner and various other faculty members who contributed jokes or funny stories.

We are still looking for other ideas for topics to include. Anyone with an idea should contact me.

We hope to have the book ready for distribution this summer and are targeting faculty members in their first or second year(s) out of the PhD program. It is my hope that we can expand the coverage of the handbook to include some things targeted at PhD students as they prepare to interview and to distribute the handbook at the PhD level rather than or in addition to distributing it just to folks after they get to a university.

Program Committee
Bill N. Schwartz, Chair, reports: With Kevin Stock's encouragement and Jim Rebele's approval, we have changed the review process for Annual Meeting papers and panel proposals significantly. We have set up a process that will reduce the learning curve previous Program Chairs have experienced when they took this assignment. The new process is as follows:

Each year the Section President will appoint a Program Committee Chair and an Associate Chair. The Associate Chair normally should be selected from among the five Assistant Program Chairs from the previous year (described below). The Program Committee Chair should be the Associate Program Chair from the previous year. The Associate Chair's main function is to assist and advise the Program Chair and learn from the experience. The Program Chair appoints the Assistant Program Chairs. The latter are the primary focal points for reviewing manuscripts. They select reviewers and make recommendations to the Program Chair on which manuscripts should be accepted for presentation and/or for the research forum. Reviewers and the Assistant Program Chairs review the manuscripts "blind." The Program Chair also asks for volunteers to do reviewing and forwards the names of volunteers to the Assistant Program Chairs. Assistant Program Chairs get first choice on being moderators and reviewers get first choice on being discussants. Frequently there are openings for volunteers to fill positions as moderators or discussants.

This year Jim Rebele appointed Georgia Saemann from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as Associate Program Chair. She was an Assistant Program Chair the previous year. Assistant Program Chairs this year are Alan Cherry (Loyola Marymount University), Taylor W. Foster III (New Mexico State University), Marshall Geiger (University of Florida), Jeffrey McMillan (Clemson University), and Linda Ruchala (University of Nebraska-Lincoln).

Research in Accounting Education
Currently, the members of the committee are: Carolyn Strand, Chair (Seattle Pacific University, WA); Kathy Lancaster (CalPoly - San Luis Obispo, CA); Tammy Kowalczyk (Appalachian State, NC); and Curtis Clements (Baylor, TX ). Our committee is working on the impact of research in accounting education. Specifically, we are interested in outcomes assessment, and intend to focus on communication skills. We will be investigating what assessment tools are available and how they are used to measure effectiveness.

Service-learning Committee
D. V. Rama reports: The purpose of the service-learning committee is to identify best practices from service-learning (SL) literature both to promote more effective service and to foster student development through such service activities. Many accounting students participate in community service activities through student organizations such as Beta Alpha Psi (BAP), Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and accounting clubs. The committee has focused on Beta Alpha Psi as an example; however, the proposed approach is based on broad characteristics, resources and constraints of noncredit settings and can be readily adapted to other student organizations. The committee's work on SL through student organizations is motivated by changes in the nature of accounting practice and the corresponding shift towards a competency-driven curriculum in accounting education. Service-learning in noncredit settings can be used to complement the formal curriculum in developing diverse skills identified in the AECC recommendations and the recent AICPA core competency framework.

A second reason for the committee's work is that the time spent by students in course-based SL projects in one semester may be limited since SL is typically only one of many requirements in a course. Continuing class projects through noncredit programs offers one way to build longer term relationships with the community and thus facilitates the development of sustainable SL programs. Finally, business professionals/ community leaders involved in these programs can serve as a useful resource in facilitating student reflection on issues related to community involvement, ethics and civic responsibility of professionals both in noncredit and course-based service projects.

A working paper developed by committee members Gail Cook, Al Michenzi, Bernard Milano and D. V. Rama (chair) describes a service-learning approach driven by BAP's mission, the needs of BAP's diverse members, and the need to emphasize student initiative and leadership. The paper offers best practices for effective implementation based on service-learning and other educational literature in the following areas: (1) planning, (2) developing community partnerships, (3) contacting community organizations, (4) executing projects, (5) implementing reflection, and (6) assessing project success. The committee welcomes feedback from T&C members. For a copy of the paper, contact D. V. Rama (drama@mediaone.net).

Two-Year College Issues
Susan Crosson, Santa Fe Community College, reports: The Two-Year College Relations committee met in Sarasota in January. The committee reported on activities related to two-year colleges which include: a proposed panel session at the AAA Annual Meeting about facilitating articulation of transfer students and coordinating curriculum issues, panel sessions at the Annual Meeting on great ideas for teaching Financial and Managerial accounting, sending registrants to the Annual Meeting from Two-Year Colleges an invitation to attend T&C sessions and breakfast as well as the Two-Year sessions, and exploring other outreach ideas.

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