Message from the Associate Dean

The world of accounting is rapidly changing. With the merger of the legacy Canadian accounting organizations into a single professional designation, accountants are increasingly being asked to play an important strategic decision-making role in industry and public organizations. The modern accountant can no longer be seen as simply a bookkeeper, auditors or taxation expert - instead they are required to possess an increasingly broad set of skill and competencies beyond being able to manipulate numbers in a spreadsheet. For those going into public accounting, the days of slowly working your way up through the firm to become a partner are coming to an end. Firms are increasingly demanding that their employees either "move up or move out" in a shorter period of time.

Our Master of Accounting (MAcc) degree was developed to help the profession better adapt to this evolving landscape. Our goal is to inspire our students to become "scary good" professional accountants. The first element in accomplishing this goal is to ensure that our graduates all possess the technical competencies to ensure success in their future careers with the goal of passing the CPA Canada CFE examination upon completion of the program. We are particularly proud to be the first masters level program in Western Canada to be accredited to a CPA Canada Level "D" national standard. This allows graduates of our program to bypass Capstone 1 and 2 in the CPA PEP program, thereby being prepared to write the CFE directly upon graduation.

While mastery of the technical skills will enable you to enter the profession, long-term development and career success requires fine-tuning of skills that will allow you to stand out among your peers as an accounting leader. We believe our extended emphasis on these enabling competencies is what sets us apart from other educational programs. Our students will not only have the core accounting skills such as auditing, finance, taxation and performance management - but they will also have the opportunity to take courses in leadership, strategy, negotiations and project management which will help "round-out" their management skills and accelerate their professional accounting career.