Effective learning strategies awards highlight innovative curricula

Wendy Tietz, associate professor of accounting at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, received the 2014 Bea Sanders/AICPA Innovation in Teaching Award for the first sequence of accounting. Her entry, “Accounting in the Headlines: A News Blog for the Introductory Accounting Classroom,” focused on a website with articles about companies and events that can be used in the classroom to illustrate introductory financial and managerial accounting concepts.

Ashley Stark and Scott Hanson, assistant professors of accounting at Dickinson State University in Dickinson, N.D., received the 2014 George Krull/Grant Thornton Teaching Innovation Award for junior- and senior-level accounting courses. Their submission, “The College to Professional Experience,” was designed to better prepare students for their roles within the accounting profession via a simulated office environment.

Tina M. Loraas, Taylor Associate Professor in the School of Accountancy at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., and DeWayne Searcy, CG Mills Faculty Fellow and director of the School of Accountancy at Auburn University, received the 2014 Mark Chain/FSA Teaching Innovation Award for the graduate-level sequence. Their entry, “Digging Deep: Using Forensic Analytics as a Context to Teach Excel and Access,” focuses on a forensic accounting case study, requiring students to analyze more than 1 million records pulled from a company’s data set and determine whether potential abnormalities should be identified and investigated to determine if they were due to error or fraud.

The award sponsors—the AICPA, the Federation of Schools of Accountancy, and Grant Thornton—provide each award recipient or team with $2,500.

The winners will present their curricula in person at the 2015 American Accounting Association annual meeting. The curricula will also be included alongside past winners as part of the AICPA’s Accounting Professors’ Curriculum Resource.