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F e l l o w s h i p s ( c o n t . )

Wolfe Named Curling Faculty Fellow

Michael Wolfe, assistant professor of Accounting and Information Systems in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, was recently named the Curling Faculty Fellow in Accounting and Information Systems by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors. The Curling Fellowship in Accounting and Information Systems was established in 2008 through a gift from Doug C. Curling, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from Virginia Tech. The fellowship is intended to help the college recruit and retain outstanding scholars in accounting and to honor Curling’s father, Calvin T. Curling, and uncle, James C. Curling, who also attended Virginia Tech. Wolfe joined Virginia Tech as an assistant professor in the fall of 2013. His research examines the impact of regulatory change, ethics, and emerging influences such as crowdsourcing on decision making in accounting and finance. He has published four articles in peer-reviewed journals, one of which was in one of the top journals in accounting. He is a frequent presenter at top academic conferences and a reviewer for several prominent journals in accounting. Wolfe has taught a range of courses in financial statement analysis and financial accounting.

He received a Ph.D. in accounting from Oklahoma State University, where he earned three previous degrees: a master’s degree in quantitative financial economics, an MBA, and a bachelor’s degree in accounting. His work experience includes more than 10 years in the banking and energy marketing industries.

A C I S C u r r i c u l u m C h a n g e s ACIS Curriculum Changes

During the past three years the Accounting and Information Systems curriculum has undergone some exciting and forward-thinking changes. An in-depth analysis of the undergraduate and graduate curriculums was performed which included an examination of peer and aspirant universities and incorporated feedback from ACIS faculty and the ACIS Advisory Board. These changes have included modifications to existing courses and integration of further technologies. In order to add flexibility and to streamline the curriculum, one of the modifications is the integration of material from two undergraduate audit courses, and two undergraduate tax courses into one audit course and one tax course that will cover the essential material. A major benefit of this change is that it will help our students complete the curriculum without getting “backed up” and out of sequence due to participating in a study abroad semester, an internship, or due to a serious medical illness. Furthering this, the department will offer the two new integrated courses during both the Fall and Spring semesters. In addition, this change will allow for more students to double major in accounting and get further business education to facilitate their career success. This change is also consistent with the University’s plan for a “VT-shaped” student as it provides undergraduate ACIS majors additional electives permitting them to broaden their education and select electives in which they are interested, and to provide them additional skills which should be relevant to the career path they wish to pursue. Furthermore, this brings our curriculum more in line with our peer and aspirant schools which place more CPA-related training into the master’s program. Another major change to the curriculum is the introduction of an Accounting Analytics course. The future of accounting is ever- evolving and to allow our curriculum to be at the cutting edge of changes, a course focused on looking forward has been developed. The Accounting Analytics course includes analysis of big data, data cleaning, use of data visualizations, emerging auditing techniques, and tool-agnostic critical thinking. This course incorporates various software including advanced Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, IDEA, and Tableau. This course was offered for the first time in the Fall of 2018 and will be required for all ACIS undergraduate and graduate students.

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