Awards recognize innovative teaching methods

Nine accounting educators received 2019 Effective Learning Strategies Awards. Co-sponsored by Grant Thornton and the Federation of Schools of Accountancy, the awards are given to college and university educators who develop unique, effective teaching tools for introductory, upper division, and graduate courses. Winners are determined by the AICPA Academic Executive Committee’s Teaching Innovation Task Force based on presentations made during the American Accounting Association’s Annual Meeting held in August in San Francisco.

Stephanie Grimm (University of St. Thomas) received the Bea Sanders/AICPA 2019 Teaching Innovation Award for “Junkyard Planet: Teaching Managerial Accounting With a Sustainability Theme,” which uses the global for-profit metal scrap industry to study managerial accounting issues, global economic forces, and sustainability issues. Also, Wendy Tietz (Kent State University), Tracie Miller Nobles (Austin Community College), and Jennifer Cainas (University of South Florida) received honorable mention for “Data Analytics Projects for Introductory Accounting Using Excel, Tableau, and Power BI,” which allowed students to work with a dataset containing more than 65,000 insurance sales records to learn how to make informed decisions for business management.

Ethan Kinory (Rutgers Camden, State University of New Jersey), Kimberly Church (University of Missouri—Kansas City), and Sean Stein Smith (Lehman College) received the George Krull/Grant Thornton 2019 Teaching Innovation Award for “Blockchain: Bridging the Profession-Education Gap With Instructional Scaffolding,” which introduced students to blockchain concepts, including using time stamp activity for internal controls, generating a hash to recognize common values, and creating a hyperledger to observe asset exchanges.

Mahendra Gujarathi (Bentley University) received the Mark Chain/FSA 2019 Teaching Innovation Award for “Integration in Accounting Curriculum: Leading by Example,” which uses three case studies based on one company to help students understand an organization from the perspectives of a financial accountant, external auditor, and financial analyst. Also, Mary Michel (Manhattan College) received honorable mention for “Benchmark Ratio Analysis Using One’s Own College: A Service-Learning Project for the Governmental and Not-For-Profit Accounting Course,” a service-learning project in which students calculated and analyzed financial statement ratios for their own university relative to peer, competing, and local institutions.

The materials from these submissions will be posted to the AICPA Accounting Professors’ Curriculum Resource tool, available at aicpa.org.