GCOM 734 - Special Topics in Accounting

The purpose of this course is to expand your knowledge of financial reporting and to familiarize you with topics currently of interest to the accounting profession, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. To achieve these objectives, the course will examine accounting issues from two perspectives. First, we will explore financial reporting and financial reporting issues from a user perspective. This perspective should enable you to understand the significance of financial statement components more completely and will facilitate your future performance in your financial statement analysis course. Second, we will examine the authoritative accounting literature underlying acceptable accounting choices. As an accounting professional, you will often be faced with ambiguous or unclear accounting issues. This perspective will improve your ability to conduct financial reporting research and to provide concise and thoughtful resolutions to theses issues. The perspective will also provide a foundation for your future graduate course in accounting policy. The pedagogy for the course will include lectures, readings, illustrative class examples, research cases, memorandum preparations and class presentations.

Credits: 3