Meeting & Agendas

The minutes were approved unanimously with no corrections. Meeting Attendance: Attendees: Chase Insogna (Zoom), Tony Ross, Kate Rhoden, Julie Sigety, Connie Clark, Lisa Sretenovic, Donna Boykin, Mike Figer (new), Jaclyn Roberts (new), Tracie Miller (new) ACC Attendees: Reed Peoples, Jay Thibodeaux, Denise White, Kimberly Cameron, Kristy McDermott, Johnny Howard, May Wang, Kelli Blount, Larry Stephens, Okera Bishop, Yolonda Holland, Dean Lorlie Ellis (Braxton) Regrets:, Chris Noak, Gary Brown, Joe Mader, Jim Pumphret, La Tasha Roberts, Karina Parlato (not voted in yet), Melinda Oster (not voted in yet)

Summer Enrollment: Kate asked about enrollment. Dr. Peoples said that Summer enrollment is down, but we have another month. Dr. Ellis (Braxton) said that another reason why they are trying this new 8-week model at Northridge campus is because it used to have 17,000 students and now it has 1400 students. So it is an initiative to bring students back to campus. The next meeting will be scheduled for late Oct/early Nov (after tax season).

Board approved new advisory board members – Tracie, Jaclyn, & Mike

Dr. Peoples gave an update on the department and ACC. We have a new full-time faculty, Okera Bishop – Started Spring semester and came from Lone Star College b. Full-time faculty interviews on May 5 – Should have 11 total full-time & 20-30 adjuncts. Dr. Peoples stated the difficulty of finding qualified instructors. CPA’s with master’s degrees can make more starting out in the profession than with teaching, so it is difficult to find good candidates. We had 10 applicants, with only 6 qualified. 2 are unavailable so we will be interviewing 4 candidates. c. Articulation agreement with TX State – Students that do not have a bachelor’s in accounting can take their 30 credits in accounting and then be accepted into TX State’s Master’s Degree program. We already have this articulation agreement with St. Ed’s & TAMU. It takes 63 hours of various business & accounting classes to be eligible for the CPA exam: 24 hrs in business, 30 hrs upper-division accounting, 6 hrs pre-requisite accounting, and 3 hrs in ethics. Kelli asked if a student would take less courses to get their master’s if they take our professional program at ACC, and Dr. Peoples said that they will not transfer to the university, but they will accept our courses as “core” courses that would be required if the student hadn’t already taken those courses. We believe that this will help the students as well as our program. There is also some discussion for an articulation agreement with Franklin University. Tracie said that since she is so familiar with our curriculum, they would be able to accept some our courses for graduate-level credit and they would have to do their last 20 credits at Franklin for their master’s. Tony asked about TX universities not accepting credits, but Tracie pointed out that Franklin University is out of Ohio, so it has different requirements. d. 8-week courses – NRG campus is going to be completely 8-week courses. Business Administration degree is going to be a pilot program at NRG. Dr. Ellis (Braxton) stated that getting the general studies departments to try it was challenging but they did agree to try it and see how it will work. Now there is more buy-in than in the beginning. This edge gives us more exposure to more students and they can plan on being one 1 campus to get their degree too. Additional support (i.e. tutoring) needs to be provided to the students. Kate asked about how this looks for the students and how often do they attend class. Kelli shared about her 8-week hybrid class where the students come to class for 1 ½ hrs twice a week and the rest of the class is asynchronous online (pre-recorded lectures) so they can do that work around their own schedule. Okera pointed out that students can focus on 2 classes at one time, instead of 4 classes at once. Dr. Peoples asked about whether the advisory board thinks that we should offer our professional accounting courses in an 8-week format as well. Kate said that she would like to hear more about how the pilot is working before considering expansion. Julie stated that if she had to come to class every day, that may not be feasible to work, but maybe if it was in the evening. Dr. Peoples stated that part of the design would be for the classes to be hyflex, so they would be in the classroom and optionally online for the convenience of the students. VA students are required to have at least one in-person class for benefits and some students want to come to a classroom. So we want to offer classes in person. Dr. Ellis (Braxton) stated that the VC of Distance Education wants to have 80% of classes hyflex for the Fall semester, but currently at 26%. So there is support for classes to convert to hyflex. Kelli asked if anyone is doing a hybrid-hyflex, where the time that they do come together for class has the online option as well. That doesn’t seem to be an option yet but may be necessary for the classes to fill up. Tony said that our department has a rigorous program and maybe we can offer classes just as effectively online, but interactivity seems to be key to that. Online courses were not acceptable before COVID, but now it is okay. Is that going to continue? Kate said that from an employer’s perspective being hyflex, where people are online and others are physically present, is just a normal day at work. Connie asked if the TSBPA still had the requirement that there must be less than 15 credits online and Dr. Peoples clarified that the requirement is no longer an issue. Dr. Peoples asked the employers if they thought that there would be a need for students to take courses from their office, like a group of 4-5 employees that may sit together and take a course from their office online or hybrid. Julie said that this is already happening naturally where students are taking classes together. Denise said that they used to customize the classes more for what specific employers wanted students to learn. e. Dr. Peoples stated that the Board releases the CPA performance on a monthly basis, instead of quarterly, so the results fluctuate month-to-month on whether or not we are in the Top 10 colleges in TX, but the Board has not released any more data since December. Looking at our totals for the entire year, we have a pass rate of 60%. The other community colleges are 20-30%. So, we are still a viable program. Kate asked about the 120-credit hour proposed change in order to take the CPA exam. Dr. Peoples stated that our faculty have discussed it but the students will still need 150 credits to get their CPA license. We do not believe that it will affect our enrollment overall, but we do have concerns that students that have already passed the exam may decline in their quality of work because they just want the hours. Tracie said that at Franklin that they are reframing the messaging to their students is not about just having their eligibility to sit, but as they are taking their courses, this can be their opportunity to sit for that part of the exam. For example, if they just took their auditing class, then this may be a good time for them to take the auditing exam. And the same for their tax courses. Also, NASBA has extended the time allowed to pass all 4 parts after passing 1 part to 30 months. This will still have to be voted in the TX legislature as well.

We have a 3-year cycle for this intensive program review (50+ pages). We looked great in comparison to the other community colleges in passing the CPA exam. Regarding ACCT 2301 & 2302 (financial & managerial), we’ve also been seeing a skyrocketing demand for online synchronous classes, where students join the class online at a specific timeline, and asynchronous, where the students are not required to meet at all. The students are doing better than the classroom students when that was not the case in the past. Our withdrawal rates are lower too. Students seem to have adapted to these learning styles after COVID. We are trying to offer our courses in the modalities that the students want. b. SWOT analysis – Lack of marketing for our various programs came up a lot

a. Technician program has 3 assessments/goals and all of them passed b. Financial accounting course (ACCT 2301) has met their goals, but the Managerial accounting course (ACCT 2302) has been consistently NOT meeting their goals, so Kelli is leading a committee of 2302 faculty to come up with a new assessment that will align better with the goals of the course. Dr. Peoples asked the committee what the students should learn from a managerial accounting course. Tony said cost analysis (CVP). Kate said that they should understand budget-to-actual. Budget, contribution margin and break-even analysis came up. Tracie said that AAA consulted with IMA to come up with core curriculum from industry contributors and posted the results. Tony mentioned standard costing and variance analysis. Dr. Peoples asked the advisory board to email if they think of other topics that they determine applicable. Many of the students are business majors, not CPA’s.

Kristy & Dr. Peoples For the core exam in tax, the department has been discussing replacing ACNT 1331/1347 (ind/entity tax) with a Survey of Tax course for students not specializing in Tax Compliance & Planning for the CPA exam. These students will be able to get all of the tax curriculum that they will need in one class, Survey of Taxation. Students planning to take the tax discipline track for the CPA exam will continue to take the 2 more robust courses. Planning to use a textbook that is a hybrid between the individual/entity course curriculum to only cover the topics that are covered in the core tax blueprints. Kristy showed the publisher alignment table showing the blueprint topics for the tax core and which chapters covered those topics or would be in the next edition. We need the advisory board to vote on whether we add this new Survey of Taxation course or not. Dr. Peoples asked if anyone has any questions or discussion about it. Jaclyn noted that this is great for non-tax CPA’s to have that baseline knowledge. Dr. Peoples state that most universities have a Survey Tax for students that do not plan to go into tax. Chase advised that chapters may need to be taught in a different order because business deductions, depreciation, etc. are taught before corporation formations, so it seems like that would be confusing to students. Tracie explained that those chapters are taught on a sole proprietorship level and then those principles carry forward to the corporate & entity concepts as well. Julie asked about a student that may change their mind or what classes would those students be taking instead of the tax courses. Dr. Peoples explained that the Survey of Taxation class could be a substitute for Individual Tax and then the student could still take Corp/Partnership Tax. Denise stated that if a student is planning to take the financial discipline (BAR), then there are plenty of other accounting courses that will be more beneficial (e.g. financial analysis, fraud examination, accounting theory, advanced accounting, etc.) For students that want to take the IT discipline (ISC), we currently encourage students that have an IT background to talk to the Board to see if they will accept any of their courses. Tracie mentioned that it is hard to find accountants with any knowledge in it. She said that Franklin University is coordinating with their cybersecurity classes to cross-reference as accounting classes. Dr. Peoples said that ACC has just added a 4-yr bachelor's degree in cybersecurity so we would like for the Board to approve those junior/senior level courses. We don’t know if the Board will allow it. Tony made the motion to approve the creation of the Survey of Taxation course. Donna seconded the motion. All approved.

New program, called Entrepreneurship, in which the bookkeeping students will also take individual & entity tax courses with the intention that they will be dual-trained in both bookkeeping & tax. Chase said that this sounded good to him. Connie said that it is hard to find someone that knows what they are doing and this sounds like a great track.

table for next meeting

table for next meeting