Have you been wanting to explore the McCombs School of Business but been unable to see it in person? Take a virtual tour and see what makes Texas McCombs a premiere and top-ranked business school.
Learn more about the McCombs School of Business, Master in Professional Accounting program, and living in Austin by visiting our website.
Since 1996, David Platt has called UT home. He has touched the lives of thousands of students teaching managerial and cost accounting in the BBA, MPA, and various MBA programs. Let’s learn more about Dave and his current role as UT’s Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.
Dave Platt did not set out to earn a PhD in accounting. After working as an auditor for PwC in Philadelphia and then in industry, he returned to Cornell intending to earn his PhD in operations management. While in grad school, he found that there was a discipline called managerial accounting that sat at the intersection of accounting, finance, marketing – and he was hooked!
While at Texas McCombs, Dave wore a variety of different hats. He began as a faculty member and researcher, and then added the director of the Center for International Business Education and Research to his resume. After 12 years in that role, Dave became Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, where he stewarded the operations of the BBA program. In 2019, he joined the Provost’s Office as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.
In his first 18 months in the Provost’s Office, Dave concentrated on building a working network among the many different undergraduate programs at UT, to make the academic experience the very best it can be across our large and diverse university. Dave notes that “UT is a big place, but it’s important that for any given student it feels like it is a small, tight-knit community.”
Dave has dedicated 12 of the last 18 months largely to responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and trying to do so in a way that, as much as possible under our current operating constraints, keeps undergraduate education at UT going strong. While he misses teaching students, their well-being and educational experience are both still paramount concerns for him.
Dave cross-country skiing with his wife, Nancy.
In his spare time, Dave loves to read, particularly history, and spends as much time as possible in the mountains skiing, hiking, and enjoying the fresh air with his wife, Nancy. And like so many of us, he picked up a few new hobbies during the pandemic. “I’m finally learning to play guitar, something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’ve gotten into making ice cream and dreaming up new recipes,” Dave said. “I even based one on shoofly pie, which I remember from growing up in Pennsylvania.”
Can you guess what year the first accounting course was offered at UT? Or when the first accounting PhD degree was conferred? How about the year we hired our first tenure-track female faculty member? We’ll take you through a short history of the Department of Accounting at The University of Texas at Austin.
Spurgeon Bell was Dean of the School of Business Administration from 1922-1925.
1912: Spurgeon Bell stands before 20 students in UT’s first accounting class, the Theory and Practice of Accounting.
1928: George Newlove is the first accounting faculty member to receive a distinguished professorship, funded by discovery of oil on university land in 1923.
1934: The first PhD in Accounting at the College of Business Administration is awarded to Lloyd Raisty.
1939: For the first, but not the last, time, accounting classes are populated with more women than men (due to WWII enlistment in the armed forces).
1947: The Department of Accounting is one of five departments created in the College of Business Administration.
1948: The Master in Professional Accounting program is established.
Anna Fowler taught at UT from 1977-2004.
1957: Luzine Bickman is the first Black student to be initiated into the Theta Chapter, a UT fraternal accounting organization.
1958: With nine inaugural members, the Department of Accounting’s Advisory Council is established.
1962: The new Business Administration Economics Building opens (now known as CBA).
1977: Anna Fowler is the first female, tenure-track professor hired by the Department.
1985: The five-year integrated approach to the MPA is introduced, allowing McCombs freshmen and sophomores to begin working on their masters in accounting while still in undergrad.
Rowland Atiase has been a faculty member since 1987.
1987: Rowland Atiase is the first Black, tenure-track professor hired by the Department.
1994: Texas McCombs’ Department of Accounting is ranked #1 in Public Accounting Report’s survey for the first time.
2002: The ECON-MPA program, which allows UT economics students to get a head start on MPA coursework during their senior year, is created.
2012: The Department of Accounting celebrates its 100 year anniversary!
2019: The MPA Program adopts a proposal requiring every course within the program to include content on data analytics.
As you explore your future in accounting, we hope you discovered some new and useful information on the Department of Accounting. Reach out to us or visit our website to learn more!
From earning an undergraduate degree in history to making a professional pivot into accounting and finance, John Bober (MPA ’82) has had a long and successful career. After earning his Master in Professional Accounting, John started at Arthur Andersen and quickly made partner. He then transitioned to GE Capital, where he spent nearly 23 years of his career. John retired in March 2018 and is now a consultant in the leasing industry. He is also a long-time supporter of our Department.
TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR CAREER AT GE.
I joined GE Capital after more than a decade in public accounting and right after making partner. It was one of the best career decisions I made. The breadth of experience and wisdom I gained at GE were unparalleled. Over my 23 years, I had roles in controllership, finance, risk, and general management. My favorite stints were those I had in project finance, where I led the group that analyzed the accounting and tax implications of investment structures and established investment hurdle rates. I also had other responsibilities within the larger GE organization, including lease pricing and serving as the finance group’s subject matter expert for leasing. At the time, responsibility at GE went to the person and not the position, which allowed for considerable professional growth.
HOW ARE YOU STAYING BUSY IN RETIREMENT?
Since retiring, I have stayed active in the industry. I am now a consultant with The Alta Group, a global consultancy dedicated to equipment leasing and finance — it’s a very interesting world and I enjoy consulting on lease accounting, pricing, and operations. My deepest experience is on the lessor side, and spending time on transactions and establishing lease programs and captive finance arrangements is where my retirement days usually go.
WHY DID YOU JOIN THE DEPARTMENT’S ADVISORY COUNCIL?
Maybe I am a frustrated academic… I enjoy learning what is being taught, and it is great to hear what is on the minds of students and what they are looking for. It was especially helpful when I was recruiting on campus for GE.
WHY DID YOU SWITCH FROM HISTORY TO ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE?
I figured out in college that I needed a skill that I could monetize. I had the opportunity to work in foreign policy, but I passed as UT offered me a fellowship to study accounting in a great program. I do credit my liberal arts courses with helping me learn how to think and process large amounts of information. My history degree also taught me to write, which has served me well.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER MOST ABOUT YOUR TIME AT TEXAS McCOMBS?
In the early 80s, there was much to talk about in accounting from a theory and public policy perspective; I thoroughly enjoyed the courses that emphasized the “why” and how accounting information is used. This served me well in the second half of my career, when I was more of a thought leader in the accounting world. I also remember how Michael Granof’s two government accounting courses gave me a window into a different world.
Learn more about starting your journey in accounting at Texas McCombs MPA by visiting our website.
In December, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) announced 2019 CPA exam pass rates. UT Austin trailblazed its way to the top of the list for first-time test takers at large collegiate programs (60 or more test takers). Read on to learn more about how the current exam is scored, test-taker outcomes, and upcoming changes to the exam.
The CPA exam is a 16 hour assessment divided into four sections: Auditing and Attestation (AUD), Business Environment and Concepts (BEC), Financial Accounting and Reporting (FAR), and Regulation (REG).
In 55 jurisdictions nationally (50 states and five U.S. territories), nearly 83,000 candidates took the CPA exam in 2019. Of these candidates, approximately 63,000 were first-time test takers and close to 23,000 passed either all parts or the final section of the exam.
In 2019, UT Austin had 358 first-time candidates sit for the exam; 89.5% passed all parts on that first try – an exceptionally high percentage. For all 2019 test takers, UT Austin had an impressive pass rate of 83%. This compares to a 54% pass rate for all test takers at all other Texas colleges and universities – go ‘Horns!
How is the exam scored? And, what contributes to our students’ impressive performance?
For each section of the CPA exam, a candidate’s score can range from 0 to 99. To pass a section, the candidate must score a 75 or better.
A candidate’s total score on each of the AUD, FAR, and REG sections is a weighted combination of scaled scores on multiple-choice questions and task-based simulations. For the BEC section, the total score is a weighted combination of scaled scores on multiple-choice, task-based, and written communication questions.
Scaled scores are calculated using formulas that take into consideration both whether the question was answered correctly and level of difficulty. For multiple-choice questions, the exam employs a multi-stage adaptive test delivery model, meaning that the first question is moderately difficult, and the next question will be as or slightly more difficult, based on the candidate’s answer to the previous question. (This adaptive model is not used for task-based simulations or written communications.)
This system allows the candidate’s proficiency level to be measured more accurately. Answering a challenging question incorrectly doesn’t necessarily penalize the test taker in the same way as answering a less-difficult question incorrectly. Scaled scores make it possible to standardize exam results so that the results from different sets of questions are comparable.
The three institutions that oversee the CPA exam include the AICPA, NASBA, and Prometric, the organization that offers the exam at its authorized centers. Other than the written portions of the exam that are graded by humans, CPA exam scoring is completely automated. Candidate responses go through multiple quality assurance reviews to ensure scoring accuracy.
What contributes to our students’ outstanding performance? It’s difficult to say with certainty, but we like to think it’s a combination of the high-caliber students in our program and the rigorous courses that provide them with a solid accounting foundation. As was mentioned in our fall edition, no university has had 12 Sells Award winners in a single year – ever. Professor Ross Jennings likely summed it up best when he said, “The secret to our success isn’t much of a secret. Our students are interested in learning and we have faculty interested in teaching them.”
In considering the importance of the CPA exam, Chad Libertus (MPA ’94), a KPMG tax partner, observed that in many professional-service firms, including at KPMG, people drive the firm’s success. He noted that KPMG “empowers our professionals to own their careers and proactively develop the skills and knowledge to help them succeed, which includes taking the CPA exam and getting a CPA license.” In Chad’s opinion, obtaining this important credential demonstrates that a professional has the skills, knowledge, and foundation to be a strategic business advisor who can provide valuable client service. It also showcases the ability to think critically and strategically, which should allow for solving a wide range of challenges in order to deliver a better client experience.
Beginning in 2024, as part of its CPA Evolution project, the AICPA expects to offer a redesigned CPA exam. The revised exam will emphasize understanding business processes and data analytics and deemphasize topics that a newly licensed CPA would not be expected to know. Testing on the material in the updated blueprints for the exam is scheduled to begin in July 2021, with the final redesign completed by January 2023, and the new format launched in January 2024. Candidates still will be tested in the AUD, BEC, FAR and REG format; the refresh in topic coverage and emphasis is intended to maintain the relevance of the exam to our changing profession. We expect that our students will continue to perform well on the redesigned exam and that our Sells Award record will be tough to beat for years to come.
In December, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) announced the CPA Exam pass rates statistics, and The University of Texas at Austin trailblazed to the top of the CPA Exam’s pass rates from first-time test takers at large collegiate programs (60 or more test takers).
The top first-time CPA Exam pass rates by large collegiate programs for 2019 are:
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) also named 133 winners of the 2019 Elijah Watt Sells Award. This award recognizes test takers who scored a cumulative average score above 95.50 across all four sections of the CPA exam, passed all four sections of the exam on their first attempt, and completed their testing in 2019. The University of Texas at Austin had twelve (yes, twelve!) Sells Award winners in 2019:
Section pass rates* for all 55 jurisdictions in 2019 are:
Section pass rates** for UT Austin Candidates in 2019 are:
Section pass rates** for all other Texas colleges & universities in 2019 are:
*All first-time test takers in 2019
**All test takers (first time or otherwise) in Texas in 2019
Advice on selecting mutual funds, listening to CEOs, and considering climate change, courtesy of Texas McCombs research, including our very own accounting professor Jeff Hales.
If you’re looking to make better investment decisions, it’s a good idea to listen to the experts. And who’s more of an expert than a business researcher who studies investing and the stock market.
With that in mind, consider applying these practical research findings from Texas McCombs to your investments:
Seek low taxes on mutual funds. A study by finance professor Clemens Sialm showed that funds with lower tax burdens had higher-than-average returns. That’s why Sialm urges fund shoppers to look beyond past performance and check out taxes as well. “You have to dig deeper in the prospectus, but the information is there,” he says. Research websites such as Morningstar can help. They list the taxable distributions along with the performance of a fund.
Bet on big-talking CEOs. When executives use extreme language on quarterly earnings calls — words such as “astonishing,” “incredible,” and “exceptional” — it can benefit capital markets, according to research from accounting professor Jeff Hales. For executives who speak in superlatives, their words can produce a stronger reaction in stock prices, increased trading volume, and adjusted analyst forecasts. CEO language can even foreshadow a company’s future earnings.
E. Ben Yager received a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1947 and received the first ever MPA degree in 1949. Seventy-one years later, his granddaughter, Katherine Glass, is following in his footsteps and graduated with her MPA this spring. Though Ben passed away twelve years ago, as Katie tells us, his legacy lives on through his family and accounting career.
A young Katherine Glass and her grandfather, Ben Yager, smile for a photo.
TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF, KATIE.
I grew up in Florida and completed my undergraduate studies at Elon University. In addition to my grandfather and me, my father, sister, uncle, two aunts, and two cousins have majored in accounting!
WHAT SPARKED YOUR INTEREST IN ACCOUNTING?
Initially, I was attracted to accounting because it offered solid career opportunities. Through my accounting coursework, I have been pleasantly surprised to find that it is also dynamic and growth-oriented.
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO ATTEND THE TEXAS McCOMBS MPA PROGRAM?
Because of its prestige, wealth of resources, and the exceptional community of diverse, impressive faculty and peers. I knew this program would offer a broad array of opportunities for academic and professional growth. Plus, my grandfather went to school here, so McCombs runs in the family.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER MOST ABOUT YOUR GRANDFATHER?
I remember that grandfather was a loyal fan of both Longhorn and Cincinnati Reds’ baseball, and he always welcomed my visits to Texas with Fig Newtons — a tradition begun by his father.
WHAT LEGACIES DID YOUR GRANDFATHER LEAVE BEHIND?
In his 35 years as a professor and later as a department chair, my grandfather worked to enhance the accounting profession by educating several generations of accounting professionals, actively contributing to numerous professional organizations, and building long-term professional relationships with leaders in accounting and finance. Upon his retirement in 1989, an endowment was created in his name that provides scholarships for accountancy students at Miami University.
WHAT ARE YOUR POST-GRADUATION PLANS?
This fall, I am excited to be joining PwC’s Assurance practice in Tampa, Florida!
ABOUT DR. E. BEN YAGER
After graduating from UT Austin, Ben worked as the Chief Accountant of Sul Ross State College in Alpine, Texas. He then entered Indiana University’s PhD program and received a Doctorate of Business Administration. At Indiana, he met his wife, Jeanne, and they were married on June 13, 1953. In 1955, Ben began his teaching career at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He was named the C. Rollin Niswonger Professor of Accountancy and was Department Chairman for over five years before returning to his beloved job as a professor. He co-authored three editions of the CPA Examination: A Comprehensive Review. Ben was a CPA in Texas and Ohio and was a member of the American Institute of CPAs, Ohio Society of CPAs, American Accounting Association, Financial Executives Institute, and Alpha Kappa Psi business society. The E. Ben Yager Scholarship is awarded to one undergraduate student at Miami University annually.
Stuck at home? Telecommuting and leadership expert David Harrison shares 8 tips for how to make the most of this unusual work-from-home moment.
By: Sara Robberson Lentz
An unprecedented number of people across the world — from CEOs to college students — now find themselves working from home. For some, this change is causing anxiety and uncertainty about how to maintain productivity.
David Harrison is a management professor at the McCombs School of Business and a research expert on effective telecommuting and leadership. We reached out to him for advice on how to make the most of telecommuting while practicing social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The data on telecommuting is overwhelmingly positive,” he says. “Our meta-analysis found that people who telecommuted actually had higher performance. The only downside was a possible drop in the quality of their relationship with their co-workers.”
His biggest advice is to keep the virtual communication portals open. “Maintaining a connection with your peers and team is crucial,” he says. “You should be prepared to communicate more frequently about your day-to-day processes.”
Harrison believes this could be an opportunity to see how telecommuting works in new settings such as the classroom. He encourages others to remember this is uncharted territory for many, and we are all in it together. “Be more patient, be more generous, and be more open. Hopefully you are picking up new skills,” he says.
Here are his tips for how to succeed at embracing this telecommuting change:
Social connection is good for psychological health and task completion habits. Do what you can to bring peers into your circle. Ask them questions and alert them when you have something going on that could be a joint online activity. For students, if you don’t have a virtual study group, now’s the time to make one.
Communication builds trust, particularly through a narrow medium such as virtual (rather than face-to-face) work. Set aside the first 5 minutes of any meeting for “check-ins” about how the rest of life is going. There will be plenty to talk about during the next few weeks and even months.
Don’t ignore your and others’ mood(s). If a virtual partner is feeling down and you’re giddy and goofy, that’s not helpful. Empathy matters. It builds trust and keeps the relationship going, even though the emotional cues are harder to pick up. The shared experience — the synchronization — is what matters. So, use face-based interaction when you can. Show support and you’ll get support.
Create a schedule of online or virtual activities and stick to it. Routine is your rock, particularly when everything else is fluctuating around you.
Things that used to go fast are going to slow down as everyone tries to crowd into the same bandwidth. All learning curves are steep at first. You will most likely get computer-frustrated. Have an outlet. (I have a hacky sack that is getting extra use right now).
If you aren’t seen, people generally don’t think you are doing stuff. Try and create a trail and visibility for what you are doing by sending more emails, drafts, or even photos of your work. It’s important to involve others in what you are doing and for them to see proof of that.
If you’re working on things that are not digital docs, you need a way to translate them online. I recommend investing in a smartphone app that goes from photo to pdf. Some excellent apps are free, including a native app in the Google Suite and my favorite, “Tiny PDF.”
Think about how this part of your life is helping you develop your repertoire of virtual collaboration skills. You’ll definitely use them again. If you master Zoom, try Microsoft Teams, and so on. In the long run, and paradoxically, a learning orientation creates better performance because of the breadth of talent you’ve amassed.
The Department of Accounting’s research is making headlines. Take Steven Kachelmeier’s recent study with Laura Wang (UT PhD ’14) and Michael Williamson (former UT faculty member). Their research shows how incentives and rest can combine to improve creativity. Find out more about their paper, “Incentivizing the Creative Process: From Initial Quantity to Eventual Creativity” (The Accounting Review, March 2019) below.
HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH YOUR RESEARCH IDEAS?
In a sense, coming up with new research ideas is one part preparation, in terms of becoming familiar with the literature, and one part inspiration, in terms of identifying important questions that have been neglected in the literature. In the particular case of my research on creativity, my coauthors and I were aware of decades of management accounting research on how different kinds of incentives affect performance on routine, straightforward tasks, but there was essentially nothing in the accounting literature on how incentives affect the more open-ended, creative tasks that characterize contemporary business. We sought ways to fill that gap.
HOW DID THE IDEA FOR THIS STUDY COME TO YOU?
Our latest study of creativity continues a much longer program of study that dates back to a 2008 article in the Journal of Accounting Research I coauthored with Bernhard Reichert and Michael Williamson. In both that study and in a subsequent follow-up study (again with Michael) published in a 2010 issue of The Accounting Review, we found that the right kind of monetary incentives can result in a greater quantity of ideas without harming creativity. But at the same time, we did not find evidence that incentives can actually improve creativity. In the research that led to our 2019 article, Laura Wang, Michael, and I explored the reasoning that incentives might not improve creativity right away, but could possibly improve creativity after some rest. Sure enough, we found that a rest period as long as ten days or as little as 20 minutes between experimental sessions helped participants provided with monetary incentives generate not just a greater quantity of ideas but also more creative ideas.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH LAURA AND MICHAEL?
Laura and Michael are great, not only professionally, but also at a personal level. Research is much more enjoyable when research colleagues are also friends. Laura, Michael, and I developed an effective and efficient working relationship by identifying the things each of us does best, while also capturing insights from joint conversations to plan our next steps. We achieved a joint outcome that would have been very difficult for any of us to have produced individually.
TELL US WHAT THIS PARTICULAR STUDY IS ABOUT.
Is creativity something that results from hard work or from pure inspiration? Our study predicts and finds that both elements are necessary. That is, monetary incentives are necessary to motivate people to come up with lots of ideas, even if those ideas are not particularly creative right away. Then, after taking a break from the task, those who are motivated by incentives to work hard initially become more creative after they return. As a practical example, professionals at successful companies like Google and Indeed clearly work hard. But these companies also provide ample opportunities for breaks from hard work that allow creative “incubation” to take place.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CONDUCT AN “EXPERIMENT” IN ACCOUNTING?
Experimentation tests whether something matters by trying it both ways and observing the difference. For example, as every elementary school student has observed, plants grow better with ample watering (one experimental condition) than with little watering (another condition, often referred to as the “control” condition). Accounting experiments follow the same principle. Specifically, in our latest experiment, we provide monetary incentives that depend on the quantity of “rebus puzzle” ideas our participants produce in one condition, while providing fixed pay independent of production in another, control condition. We then ask separate panels of creativity raters to evaluate the creativity of the rebus puzzles our participants produce, both at the time of our initial experiment and in a second-stage task in which we ask the same participants to generate additional rebus puzzles either ten days later (in one study) or as little as 20 minutes later (in a second study). Just as the elementary school student finds that plants grow better with additional water, we find that participants’ creativity ratings are higher when they operate under monetary incentives that depend on the number of ideas they produce. Importantly, however, this difference arises only after the rest period, indicating that both incentives to work hard and some time away from the task are necessary for creativity.
WHO ARE THE “PARTICIPANTS” IN AN EXPERIMENT?
Different kinds of participants are needed for different kinds of research questions. In the particular case of this creativity research, the question did not require any particular experience or expertise, so we recruited undergraduate students as compensated volunteers. Other research questions require specific expertise, such that researchers might seek out professionals such as auditors, financial analysts, or attorneys. As one might imagine, these more experienced participants are more difficult to access, but they provide a valuable service by helping academic researchers investigate important questions that bear directly on their real-life challenges.
DO YOU EVER NEED TO RERUN AN EXPERIMENT?
Yes, absolutely! An experiment can simply fail, in which case one goes back to the drawing board and tries again. More often, an experiment does not fail, but it leaves some important questions unanswered. In our case, we found a statistically significant effect of incentives on creativity in one study after bringing participants back ten days after they participated in the first-stage experiment. This finding led us (and our journal reviewers) to wonder if it was necessary to wait a full ten days, or if a much shorter rest period could achieve the same effect. That is why we reran a different variation of our experiment with a rest period of just 20 minutes, which produced a similar finding.
YOUR LATEST ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED MANY TIMES IN THE POPULAR PRESS. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?
Who is not interested in creativity? Although our accounting backgrounds added some perspective for looking at creativity through a management accountant’s lens, a broader interest in creativity is part of everyday life for nearly everyone. Simply put, lots of people are interested in ways to become more creative, so our attempt to answer that question generated curiosity well beyond the boundaries of accounting.
Read more on Steven’s latest research here.
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