Engaging Courses

 ACC 420 Principles of Federal Taxation

Students engage in four individual tax return projects that involve using real world software to prepare tax returns based on given information about taxpayers. Students enjoy the real world aspects of the projects, and after graduation often comment how much it prepared them for preparing tax returns in practice.

Course Description: This course has two goals. First, students will gain more experience taking business transactions and aggregating them into financial statements. Second, students will learn what types of information about a firm's performance and its strategy can be inferred from reviewing its financial statements.

Course Experiences: In this course, you will learn GAAP and how these policies impact financial statements. You will construct and evaluate income statements, balance sheets and statement of cash flows. You will learn to compute and interpret profitability, turnover, liquidity and solvency. Finally, you will work within a group to analyze the annual report and financial results of a publicly traded company.

Course Description: Course intended to introduce students to the strategic nature of business communication. By the end of the course, students should be able to analyze business situations and prepare messages that fulfill all of the intended purposes of their communication, meet the needs and expectations of business audiences and take into account other relevant contextual factors. Students must have adequate oral and communication skills to be able to effectively focus on developing the higher-order thinking skills that are necessary to succeed in the course. In order to help students devise successful communication strategies, the course will also therefore emphasize the development of these higher-order skills, which include analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

Course Experience: In this course, you will learn effective communication practices necessary in a professional business setting. For online students you will be engaging in weekly video conference meetings with teammates and the instructor though Cisco WebEx and Google Hangout. 

Course Description: Overview of entrepreneurial approach, strategies and skills within a range of environments to advance technology and innovations. Students can pair ENTR 420R/520R with lab course to develop innovation-specific feasibility study or business plan.

Course Experiences: This course is designed to help you understand the innovation, ideation, entrepreneurship and successful business models. Through collaboration within a group, you will learn to integrate and apply models of innovation, strategy, problem solving and critical thinking. You will learn to assess feasibility, unique value propositions, business models, pro forma development and go-to-market solutions. Throughout the course you will work within a group to create a comprehensive business plan and investor pitch video. 

MIS 478, Project Management
Course Description: Project Management is the application of knowledge, analytical skills, scheduling software tools and techniques related to various project activities in order to meet project requirements. This course specifically addresses the nine project management "knowledge areas", the five project management "process groups" and the 4-way constraints of project management (i.e., scope, time, cost, quality). Graduate-level requirements include an additional term paper or team-based PM Project with a real organization.

Course Experiences: You will learn the life cycle of project management from initiating to closing. You will learn to identify the critical path of a project, compress a schedule under budget constraints, use Earned-Value Management techniques and conduct risk analysis for project management. You will be exposed to multiple scenarios that require you to make decisions based on scope, resources and schedules. 

ECON 453  DATA ANALYTICS AND MODELING: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS FOR ECONOMIC STRATEGY

Students learn forecasting techniques, assembly, interpretation and use of economic data; analysis of business conditions; examination of related environmental factors; construction of actual sales or revenue forecasts. This is an applied econometrics course where students learn how to work both individually and in teams with large datasets for business and government entities. Corporations describe this as data mining. The following skills will be developed or practiced in the course - Statistical Programming using SAS Software, Research methods, Communication of Statistical Analysis and Project Management.

ECON 454 ADVANCED DATA ANALYTICS AND MODELING: ADVANCED QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS FOR ECONOMIC STRATEGY

Students work both individually and in teams to develop advanced data handling, graphic visualization and econometric methods that are used in the analysis of large/big economic and business datasets. Statistical software such as SAS will be used for statistical programming and data visualization. In addition, SQL programming may be used for data management (the accessing, cleaning, merging and preparation of large datasets for analysis).

MGMT 475 Special Topics in Management (Non-Profit Consulting)

This course will provide students with real-world knowledge and experience in management consulting for nonprofit organizations.  Specifically, students work in teams and use their business expertise to consult on projects with nonprofit organizations in the community. This action-based course provides students with the opportunity to work with organizations making a positive impact on the Tucson community. Students will learn through hands-on experiences with actual clients to develop resume building experiences and skills valued in the work place. Focused application of consulting, business-related research and client management will be the emphasis of this course. 

MGMT 486 Managerial Decision Making

In addition to teaching basic theories, principles and research findings in judgment and decision making, the class is heavy on applications and is meant to give the students tools to use in both their professional and personal decisions. Decision making is treated as a skill as a skill, something the students can learn and get better at. Since decisions are everywhere, these are useful skills to acquire.

 MKTG 452 Integrated Marketing Communications

This class explores the variety of components that represent the promotional aspect of the Promotional Mix which includes advertising, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling. The semester includes a real-life project to which the students can apply what have been learned in the classroom to an actual marketing problem or opportunity. Early in the semester, students are broken into groups or "agencies." At about the same time, a Tucson or Phoenix based company who has agreed to be the sponsor for the project, comes to class and presents its particular problem or opportunity. Student groups--all of which have the same challenge assignment, have the remainder of the semester to develop and then ultimately present their group's plan in a semester-ending presentation to the organization. To help the student groups marry the course material to the project, after each major section of course content, in-class time is devoted to the groups to determine what might be appropriate to include in their proposals. In the end, the course combines both experiential learning with traditional course work in an experience that also provides an entry onto the student's resume.