When Professor Dave Greene originally created the A313 Intro to Careers in Accounting class, the fundamental idea was to make sure students understood that there is no linear path to a career in accounting. “This class shows them that they have many choices beyond simply two or three areas and that an accounting degree opens doors for them,” says Professor Brett Levitt, who currently teaches the class.

When Levitt first heard about A313, his initial reaction was that he wished such a class existed when he was a college student so he could have had a more well-rounded understanding of his career options. After getting an accounting degree from Kelley years ago, he went directly into consulting. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy what he did, but he just didn’t know what could have been.

“Now when I listen to Professor Eric Holzman talk about forensic accounting, it sounds so interesting and I think, ‘Had I known then what I know now, who knows where I would have ended up?’” says Levitt, who just completed his fourth semester teaching A313.

Levitt invites in a lot of speakers so that students can hear directly from the source what a certain career entails.

“It’s one thing for me to talk about investment banking, but having never been an investment banker, I can only explain so much,” says Levitt. “Students like hearing how these speakers got to whatever point they are at in their career—from what they did when they first started out to what they did in the second rung or third rung or wherever they are now.”

Very few people stay at the firm they started with. It’s good for students to hear that someone started in one area but then changed gears a year or two later, using the fundamentals from their early career.

Levitt exposes his students to a variety of firms, including Alvarez & Marsal, which is not a public accounting firm. Plus, he invites speakers like the campus recruiter for Grant Thornton, who explains which information to highlight on a resume and other ways to shine during the recruiting process.

Highlighting so many careers is important given that roughly 50% of Kelley students change their majors at some point.

“Unfortunately, many students find out too late—usually the second semester of their junior or senior year when they start taking their major courses—that they don’t want to stick with that major,” says Levitt. “If you’re applying your junior year for internships and yet you’ve never done anything in, say, marketing, how do you know if you want to go into consumer packaging or social media if you’ve never been exposed to those things? That’s why I love the A313 class,” which is taken by students in their first or second year at Kelley.

He’s not the only one. Levitt regularly receives feedback from former students telling him how the A313 course positively impacted their postcollegiate journey.

“They like hearing from the professionals, they enjoy the soft skills stuff we go over, and they appreciate that the class is interactive so they can practice networking and conversation starters,” says Levitt, who notes that next semester they are changing the class meeting time from twice a week for one hour to once a week for 75 minutes to align with the other accounting workshops.

“As a whole, the class lets students know about their options and gets them more comfortable communicating with others in a networking setting,” says Levitt. “The overall goal is to help them find the right job, and this class narrows the process.”

In February 2024, Kelley’s accounting department launched the Rising Leaders Board to connect former students who graduated from 1 to 10 years ago. This timeframe ensures that these board members will be 35 years old or younger. Targeting this demographic is important because these are the people launching their careers. If they work for public accounting firms, maybe
they have been promoted to manager or senior manager but are not yet partners.

The Rising Leaders Board, led by Professor Brett Levitt, serves dual purposes. One is to get former students involved in the accounting department and vested in Kelley. The other is to provide students with more direct access to young professionals they can look up to and ask questions of when these rising leaders return to campus to speak to classes such as A100 or A313 (Introduction to Accounting Careers) or at events such as “A Seat at the Table.”

“Students like hearing from former students who are not too far into their careers because it helps them envision what their career could look like for the next three to five to seven years,” says Levitt. “It’s a way to connect people and start grooming the next generation of Accounting Advisory Group (AAG) Board members so we always have a good pipeline. The AAG is excited about the Rising Leaders Board.”

The other aim of the Rising Leaders Board is to give students the opportunity to hear from people who might not have followed a traditional public accounting firm path.

“We’re trying to broaden the base of what it means to be involved in accounting,” says Levitt. Through these speakers, students see that there’s investment banking, private wealth management, investment management, financial planning and analysis, investor relations, litigation, and forensic accounting.

“Everyone talks about the Kelley network and how the Kelley alumni always want to help future Kelley alumni. This new board provides that connection,” says Levitt.

Going forward, the plan is to provide opportunities for the people on the Rising Leaders Board to get involved in ways such as working with the faculty who teach A313, since the class includes several different projects that are heavily alumni based. One of these projects is the Career Fact Sheet that requires students to interview individuals in 20 different careers, then create a document that highlights various criteria outlining what’s involved in those careers. Levitt says that most of the people on the board will make themselves available for projects like these. For instance, in place of a final exam in A313, students complete a project in which they write a couple of essays, a survey, and have a coaching session with an alumnus.

“With 170 students in A313 this past academic year, we’re hoping to get more professionals involved in that project, and the Rising Leaders Board would be a perfect way to do so,” says Levitt, who notes that currently there are 13 recent alumni serving on the board. The plan is to add one or two members every year—especially alumni who have gone through either MSADA or the 3/2 MBA
program as they tend to be more vested in IU. These alumni can speak to the benefit of earning a graduate degree in accounting at Kelley.

Every year thousands of undergraduate students hope to be admitted into the Kelley School of Business. Unfortunately, there is only room for roughly 2,500. For those who are not in that initial group of direct admits but are interested in business education, they often pursue majors in the Luddy School of Informatics or the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, or perhaps a merchandising degree from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Certificate programs and minors, in general, at the Kelley School allow nonbusiness majors to earn business credentials from the Kelley School. IU President Pamela Whitten has encouraged Kelley to create more pathways for nonbusiness majors to earn business credentials. In addition, she’s been urging Kelley and other colleges to develop additional pathways to graduate programs. Consistent with those goals, Kelley has introduced the Undergraduate Accounting Certificate Program.

“Say someone is, for example, majoring in informatics and decides that it would make sense to get an accounting credential. They could take the courses that are required for the accounting certificate at the undergraduate level, which are also the prerequisites for admission to our Master of Accounting program,” says Sonja Rego, chair of the accounting department.

When you have this combination of a technical undergraduate degree coupled with an accounting certificate, that’s hugely beneficial in terms of marketability.

“That’s going to open up the world to you on the consulting side,” says Rego. “Today everything is about getting some technology skills, and then accounting, historically, is a fantastic double major or second credential because if you understand accounting, you can excel at anything in business.”

The Undergraduate Accounting Certificate, similar to other certificate and minor programs at Kelley, requires students to take a significant number of extra courses.

Julie Head, teaching professor of accounting, teaches the intro to accounting course for nonbusiness majors with roughly 800 students each year. It’s not unusual for her students to take the course and realize that they enjoy accounting. Once they learn that, they’re eager to find out what other opportunities exist for them to expand their accounting knowledge.

“That’s the type of student we would like to give opportunities to so they can earn a credential in accounting. This [certificate] might make a big difference to these students’ future careers and job opportunities,” says Rego, who regularly talks with recruiters, alumni, and partners at firms, all of whom say they want more Kelley students. That excitement stems partly from the fact that this new certifi ate is a pathway to Kelley’s MSADA (Master of Science in Accounting with Data and Analytics) program.

“With the MSADA program, students gain more technical accounting knowledge, and there is a major emphasis on soft skills, communication skills, teamwork, and field study opportunities,” says Rego. “That’s what really sets Kelley students apart from other programs. Our students come out so polished and ready to dive into the workplace right away.”

Mia Furnanz received her degree from Indiana University in Accounting and Law, Ethics and Decision-Making (LEAD) in 2022.

Why did you choose to major in accounting?

When I first started at Kelley, I decided to major in Finance because I thought it would lead to more career opportunities for me. However, once I had taken A100 and A211, it became clear to me that Accounting was something I really enjoyed, so I decided to add it as a second major. At the time, I still thought I would go with the Finance career route because I didn’t understand the variety of different career options that were available to me as an Accounting student. However, as I began taking more advanced Finance and Accounting classes, I realized that I enjoyed the Accounting classes more and decided to start looking into career options that would be possible with Accounting. This was where I discovered the field of Forensic Accounting, the industry I currently work in, and which ultimately led me to drop the Finance major and focus on my other interests, like critical thinking and law, within the LEAD double major.

Was there a course/project/group/interaction, etc. at Kelley that has been particularly helpful to you in your career?

Because I don’t work in a traditional accounting career, like Audit or Tax, a lot of the work I do is learning on the job. However, the most applicable project that I worked on at Kelley was the final course project for Audit. In this project, we identified patterns for fraud in financial statement data within IDEA and ran queries to determine irregularities and instances of potential financial misstatements. On a project I worked on in my first year at EY, I was given a project’s general ledger data and was tasked with identifying transactions that were possibly linked to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) violations. Similar to the analysis we performed in the Audit final project, I had to query and analyze this data to determine irregular transactions and potential red flags within the data.

What was your favorite part of being an accounting student at Kelley?

I think the best part of being an Accounting student at Kelley was the vast range of business knowledge I gained and the professors’ focus on encouraging students to fully learn and understand the material. I think the ICORE and pre-requisite curriculum at Kelley is what really sets it apart as a business school and prepares people for their careers. Going into the Accounting field, you can’t only know Accounting topics really well but you also need to understand business, law, information systems, etc. I think Kelley, and the Accounting major specifically, prepares its students really well by requiring students to take classes like communications, business law, data analytics and information systems.

Drawing on your career experiences, what advice would you give to future Kelley Accounting students?

Focus on your writing and communication skills. Accounting is a very technical major and, while you will be doing technical work throughout your career, most work culminates in some sort of presentation, memo or report where you need to clearly articulate technical items to clients, regulators, lawyers, etc. The Accounting major does a great job of requiring classes like Communications for Accountants and the research paper in the Taxes and Decision-Making class. However, I would recommend taking additional classes where you can focus on your writing skills. These don’t even have to be business communication classes. You can also take these classes as electives or for your A&H requirements, focusing on topics you are interested in. For example, I took a Young Adult Fiction class and the Race and the NBA class that Clark Barwick teaches, which were both fun classes that also focused on developing writing skills.

What was your favorite accounting class at Kelley? 

My favorite accounting class at Kelley was Advanced Financial Accounting (A-422). I enjoyed this class because it was the most technically complex class I had taken at IU and I really liked how it challenged me and how much I learned. A-422 provided me a fuller picture about the items that go into a financial statement and led me to understand all of financial accounting more clearly. I also think this class best prepared me for the FAR section of the CPA because the content covered in this class was a large portion of the test. Roshan did a great job explaining complex topics in an easy to understand way that I likely wouldn’t have gotten if I had only seen this content for the first time during my Becker course.

Learn more about Mia on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/miafurnanz/

Kaitlyn Selfridge received her degree in Accounting from Indiana University with a co-major in Digital Technology Management in 2023.

Why did you choose to major in accounting?

 The biggest reason I picked accounting as my major was because I liked that it left a lot of doors open after graduating. Accounting lends itself to such a wide variety of career paths and opportunities because the knowledge you will have about the business world is extremely valuable. This aspect was super appealing to me because I couldn’t pin down what I wanted to do in the future and I like knowing I can pivot into a so many different roles.

I was also initially drawn to accounting after really enjoying my experiences in A100 and A304, and finding that the logic of why accounting works.

Was there a course/project/group/interaction, etc. at Kelley that has been particularly helpful to you in your career?

I think audit was the most helpful course I took at Kelley. The topics covered in that class helped me develop a solid foundation for auditing and the work I would be doing after graduating. It also helped prepare me for that portion of the CPA exam. I also think Accounting Research was helpful because it introduced me to the accounting guidance that would become very important once I started auditing. Learning how to search through the different resources to answer any accounting question, has been an extremely valuable tool in both the work I do now, as well as the CPA exams.

What was your favorite part of being an accounting student at Kelley?

My favorite part of being an accounting student at Kelley were the friends I made in my classes. When the classes would be challenging or while preparing for an upcoming exam, it was nice to have people to study and go over material with. I started to see similar people in my classes, and it made it easier and more enjoyable to complete group projects when you are friendly with people in class.

Drawing on your career experiences, what advice would you give to future Kelley Accounting students?

 I think the biggest piece of advice I could give to future Kelley accounting students would be that it’s okay to be intimidated by the accounting major, but don’t let that stop you from pursuing it. Intimidation is not a good enough reason to not study accounting. Truthfully, I was a bit intimidated by the courses, but it is not anything you cannot handle if you are willing to put the work in! The accounting courses can be challenging at times, but between the amazing professors and other students in your classes, there will always be someone there to help you along the way. This major was super rewarding and I’m extremely happy that I chose to study accounting.

 What was your favorite accounting class at Kelley? 

I have two favorite accounting classes that I took at Kelley. I really enjoyed A100 with Professor Vivienne Winston, and Cost Accounting with Professor Jeff Clark.

Professor Winston was the perfect person to introduce someone to accounting because she explained things in a super approachable manner and had a tried-and-true method to helping you understand the fundamentals of accounting.

Professor Clark made cost accounting easy to grasp and he was always super accommodating with his office hours. He wanted all his students to succeed and to leave his class with a better understanding of the topic, and he was always willing to go the extra mile to get students there. I was nervous going into this class after struggling with managerial accounting and this class helped build my confidence and gave me encouragement that I could do it.

Learn more about Kaitlyn on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlynselfridge/