FLC leads state in CPA exam success

Average class size of 17 allows for more attention

by Shane Benjamin
Herald Staff Writer

Article Last Updated; Tuesday, February 24, 2009 8:37AM

Photo by YODIT GIDEY/Herald photos

Cade Carlson, front-left, Johanna Begay, front-right, and others in a senior-level auditing class listen to professor Paul McGurr in Burnt Hall at Fort Lewis College on Monday.

Click image to enlarge

YODIT GIDEY/Herald photos

McGurr is assistant dean of the School of Business Administration.

Of the 30 Fort Lewis College students who took the Certified Public Accountant examination in 2007, 72 percent passed - a higher percentage among undergraduates than any other Colorado college or university.

Fort Lewis also beat the 2007 national average, which stands at 57 percent of CPA exam-takers without a graduate degree who passed all or some of the exam, according to a news release issued Monday by the college.

"We're very proud of it because we're not in a big city where there is a lot of potential interaction with the large public accounting firms," said Paul McGurr, assistant dean of the FLC School of Business Administration. "In terms of students seeing big firms and being used to it and seeing the advantage of CPA, it is very pleasing that we've had that kind of success rate."

The Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination is the world's leading accounting licensing exam. The exam has four sections, and it is not necessary for a student to take all four sections at the same time. Students also are able to retake the exam sections at later dates.

McGurr credited the success to the hard work of students, new course elements and, in some cases, whole new courses. Of the five accounting professors at FLC, all five are new since 2002, McGurr said.

One example of a new course element is the use of real-life case simulations, which is similar to how test problems are done on the CPA exam.

"Rather than just telling them what's on the CPA exam, it's an active learning exercise where they actually have to do it, and they get feedback on their answers," said Paul Herz, professor of accounting and area coordinator of the program.

This type of teaching is especially conducive to the classroom environment at Fort Lewis, where the average class size is 17 students.

"If we had 70 to 80 people in these upper-division classes, we couldn't teach the same way," McGurr said. "We would have to go to more of a theoretical approach with more basic questions and less practical experience."

Students in FLC's business school get close instruction from faculty, he added.

"They have questions, they can come ask. They're not asking a teaching assistant. They're not in a lecture class with 600 people or 300 people," he said.

Accounting students at FLC have access to a chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, which has 279 chapters.

As part of FLC's Beta Alpha Psi chapter, students take an annual trip to Denver to visit financial firms, corporations and government agencies. In exchange, financial firms and organizations visit Fort Lewis to recruit accounting majors.

shane@durangoherald.com