Accounting for student success

Graduate & Professional Studies, Marquette Business

Accounting for student success

Accounting students often struggle at first. Dr. Kevin Rich wants to make life easier for them.

Shortly after her first week of accounting classes, Kaylee Buckley called her father, sobbing. She understood nothing.

"I was in the same boat as a lot of the freshmen when I started; I felt like everyone was talking in a foreign language," Buckley recalls.

The two-time Marquette accounting graduate would sit with many first-year students who were in that same headspace years later as a Master of Science in Accounting student ambassador, a position supported by donors and Marquette alumni Pete and Kristin Kult and the brainchild of Dr. Kevin Rich, chair and Horngren Professor of Accounting. Each year, Rich designates one graduate assistant to focus on the academic and career success of first-year business and accounting students. He's learned from experience that getting early help can make all the difference.

"We consistently find that students who are just starting out in the accounting courses are the ones who benefit the most from personalized instruction," Rich says. "While every student may need extra help at some point, freshmen don't yet have a fundamental understanding of the business, and they are in the beginning stages of forming their college study habits. Early intervention can make a huge difference."

This became evident to Buckley when she was working with as many as 15 students at once, taking meetings in the accounting office to walk through homework and test prep. She found that most students were confused about the same thing that puzzled her at first: industry lingo. The solution: make the terminology relatable. Instead of saying "accounts payable," Buckley would use the analogy of a credit card bill: something that needs to be paid even if the bill isn't due right away.

Something as simple as reviewing the vocabulary can make a world of difference to struggling students.

"A lot of students will preface their question with, 'I know this is a stupid question,' and I promise them it's not," Buckley says. "A lot of people are feeling this way, and you're courageous for asking for that help."

There are plenty of academic resources available for students of all levels; the soon-to-be-open Lemonis Center for Student Success will house 14 tutoring alcoves along with a wide range of support staff. Beta Alpha Psi, the business honor society, also offers dedicated tutoring services for accounting.

"That moment where students start to get the concept and they don't even realize it, the times when students who got a D on a test email me to say they earned a 90 on the next one; if I could bottle that feeling up, I would."

However, not every freshman knows to go to these services. Rich hopes creating a dedicated first-year support position will shift the department to a more proactive stance; offering students help from the outset instead of waiting for a bad test grade to prompt a visit.

"We want to create a student support ecosystem that empowers everyone to seek the help they need no matter what grades they're receiving or what issues they're having," Rich says.

"My job was to liaison between the professors and the tutoring staff because we see a lot more of the students than just their test grades," Buckley says. "When you sit down with a student for a long time, you see their weak points and the precise places where they're struggling the most. I can pass that information along to professors."

The MSA ambassador also meets one-on-one with first year accounting majors to provide tips on how to work towards a career in accounting. "It is great for new majors to have a mentor they can learn best practices from over a casual cup of coffee," Rich says.

Thanks to the Accounting Internship Early Recruitment program, most students will secure a substantial internship with an accounting firm by the end of sophomore year. Those firms often extend job offers to their interns upon graduation, which means unsure students are essentially choosing employers years in advance. It can be a source of substantial anxiety.

An ambassador can take the edge off those nerves by discussing students' options with them and helping them feel more prepared for their advising appointments. Buckley, who works at RSM in Chicago as a process risk consulting associate, felt that career guidance in the formative stages of college was equally important to academic support, and just as crucial in helping students succeed.

Ultimately, Buckley's favorite thing about the job was watching her students succeed.

"That moment where students start to get the concept and they don't even realize it, the times when students who got a D on a test email me to say they earned a 90 on the next one; if I could bottle that feeling up, I would," Buckley says.

Rich is hiring the next first-year success coordinator this summer and hopes the position will become a mainstay in the department so that all accounting freshmen have access to the same support they received from Buckley. It would be another vital component in the mission of giving every Marquette student the resources they need to thrive.

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