The Department of Accounting at North Carolina A&T State University embarked in 1991 on a project aimed at improving the way it delivered accounting education. To give direction to the project, the department identified specific objectives. Since then, it has been engaged in the process of integrating many new activities into its program in an attempt to reach these objectives.

The first objective identified in the AECC grant proposal was enhancing students’ professional awareness, i.e., familiarizing students with the demands and rewards of the profession and of the business world in general. Two programs have been initiated to address this objective.

For freshman accounting majors, a series of required informative sessions has been developed. These sessions (labeled “mini-sessions” because they are only one hour long) cover five topics considered crucial to students’ academic and professional success. In the first mini-session, an orientation to the department and the profession, new freshmen and transfer students learn about the accounting courses they will take, the skills they will need, and the career paths they might follow. At the second mini-session, each student receives step-by-step, hands-on instruction in the use of the Macintosh microcomputers in our accounting computer lab. The third mini-session stresses the need for good speaking skills in the business world and leads the students through the steps of preparing and delivering an effective oral presentation. At the fourth mini-session, students are told about the importance of good writing skills in the accounting profession and are shown how to approach the writing required in their accounting courses and on the job. Finally, the fifth mini-session concentrates on study and time management skills needed in college and after graduation.

To further enhance students’ professional awareness, the department has organized a professional speaker series for sophomores enrolled in Principles of Accounting I and II. During their two semesters in Principles, students attend at least four presentations by visiting professionals. Topics range widely, from how to prepare for an interview to the role of accounting in government and industry.

The second objective of the curricular enhancement project was improving students’ written and oral communication skills. To this end, faculty members have concentrated on developing and using new course activities and teaching techniques that call into play the skills highlighted for freshmen in the Business Writing and Oral Presentation Skills mini-sessions. Assignments requiring written communication skills have become a standard part of almost every course. A foundation is established in Principles of Accounting I and II, where students in each section do short assignments (memos and letters) to practice the skills they acquire in their business communications course. Building on these basic skills, instructors incorporate writing into upper-level courses in a variety of ways. A semester-long Intermediate project, for example, calls for position papers and summaries of articles. In Cost Accounting, Selected Topics in Accounting, and Accounting Systems, students prepare written solutions to cases, and in Income Tax Accounting they complete comprehensive tax packages involving working papers, memos, and letters. Finally, in Auditing Principles and Advanced Accounting, students write research papers and business reports.

Similarly, activities have been designed to enhance students’ oral communication skills. Intermediate and Income Tax instructors use projects that include brief in-class presentations, giving students the opportunity to speak before an audience about business-related issues. Later, in Auditing and perhaps also Selected Topics (an elective course), students give longer presentations that are videotaped and reviewed with them so that they can see their strengths and weaknesses and work toward greater effectiveness in public speaking.

The department has hired a full-time communications specialist. She is available every day to work one-on-one with students and to assist instructors as they develop, use, and evaluate student responses to writing assignments. Her presence in the department underscores the importance of good communication skills to an accounting professional.

Improving students’ problem-solving skills was the third stated objective of the grant project. To provide a somewhat formal introduction to the kind of analytical thinking demanded in the solving of open-ended problems, cost instructors lead students through a problem-solving heuristic and then assign cases to give them practice in using that tool. Afterwards, instructors of other upper-level courses assign more cases, providing students with additional opportunities to exercise their problem-solving skills. Various writing assignments and group projects further call upon students’ abilities to cope with unstructured tasks or ambiguous situations.

The project’s fourth objective, to enhance students’ interpersonal, leadership, and organizational skills, has also been addressed through use of group projects. Junior accounting majors attend a group dynamics training workshop that focuses their attention on the “people” skills necessary for success in the accounting profession. They also complete several group projects in Intermediate and Systems. Then, as seniors in Auditing, they work in teams to serve as “financial consultants” to the student entrepreneurs in a Manufacturing Systems class in the School of Technology. Cooperative learning exercises used by instructors of Intermediate, Tax, and Advanced give students additional opportunities to hone both interpersonal and problem-solving skills.

Promoting students’ reliance on computers was the final objective identified for the project. Accounting majors are introduced to computer word processing during their first semester on campus and are then encouraged (or required, depending on the instructor) to computer-generate writing assignments in accounting courses. Later they are introduced to computer spreadsheet packages and other types of computer software.

In all of the areas focused on in the objectives, an attempt was made to foster the development of students’ basic skills and then to build on these skills. Relatively simple tasks come before more complicated and sophisticated ones—a short explanatory memo before a three-page business report, a two-minute oral summary of a news article before a 15-minute report in front of a videocamera, an end-of-chapter unstructured problem before a Harvard Business School case, and so on. Also, assignments, activities, and programs have been developed that give students a taste of the real world of accounting and thus better prepare them to assume their places in that world.