Accountancy / Business Administration
Degree Programs
Accounting | Business Administration | Management | Marketing | International Business

Accounting / BBA
Courses

When you enter the accounting program at Adrian, you'll work with professors who are Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) with real life experience. Professor David Coy serves on the board of directors of a national multi-million dollar organization and Professor Bill Nalepka worked for years in the former Big 8 (now Big 5) international public accounting firms, in locations across the country. In Professor Nalepka's managerial finance courses, you'll work in small teams to analyze current financial statements of a major corporation by preparing a written analysis and a group presentation. In his Investments and Security Analysis class, you will participate in an online stock trading project where you buy and sell securities over the Internet.

The accounting department will also offer you opportunities beyond the classroom. Accounting students recently participated in a criminal investigation simulation hosted by special agents from the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS. Professor Nalepka is on a task force to recruit and connect students to the Michigan Association of CPAs. And faculty encourage you to pursue internships where you take on full professional responsibilities for financial accounting, cost accounting, and internal auditing.

The accounting program is approved by the state of Michigan's Board of Accountancy. It will prepare you to enter and succeed in accounting in the public, private, or governmental sectors, or as an educator. You'll take with you a comprehensive understanding of the technical knowledge behind accounting, the code of ethics of the profession, and most importantly, the responsibility accountants owe to society.

Business Administration Degrees top

If you choose to study business administration, your curriculum will include a basic core of business courses, plus study in economics, computer applications, and mathematics. You will also choose a specialization, either management or marketing. Each program stresses the decision-making approach to business, where you'll learn how to think logically, analyze objectively, and communicate clearly.

Knowing how to manage information is also a critical skill. Combine your business major with a computer science minor and you'll learn how to make reasonable and insightful decisions based on the data you've gathered. You'll become an effective facilitator, one with a thorough understanding of organizational systems and information patterns. Through our computer science courses, you'll gain a working knowledge of the most commonly used programming languages, increase your ability to think logically, and learn to manage systems and databases effectively.

Management / BBA top
Courses

How should a CEO handle a situation where being honest will hurt the company, which in turn might put company employees on hard times? What about Firestone's faulty tires,
or the fall of Enron? You'll wrestle with ethical issues such as these in Professor Ann Theis' Management class. Drawing from current events, you will prepare yourself to successfully navigate the dilemmas in the business world. Recently, her students in Information Resource Management class delved into a story in Business Week titled "Privacy in an Age of Terror" in order to debate the government's increasing power to monitor phone and e-mail communication.

You'll also benefit from her real world experiences as an information systems director at Blue Cross. She will offer insight into hiring and firing, motivating employees, making organizational changes, designing new systems, and leading major projects. Want to move up the ladder? She's done it, so she'll tell you what skills it took to make the move.

In the management program, you'll learn to work in groups. You'll learn to write and think critically, and you'll develop your personal management style. You'll learn to use PowerPoint to make professional presentations and to use business software. In addition, you'll have opportunities for internships. For instance, one operations intern integrated the purchasing systems of several healthcare groups when they merged to create Lenawee Health Alliance. Such experiences will provide you with invaluable practical experience.

Marketing / BBA top
Courses

Figuring out which product will actually appeal to consumers requires a lot of expertise, so in Professor Pat Quinlan's Consumer Behavior class, you'll gain first-hand knowledge of how to do it. You'll come up with a new product-such as fruit-flavored toothpaste-and then conduct an actual survey among your peers on campus. You'll use a software program to sort and analyze the data. At the end of the class, you'll present your findings just as if you were presenting to company executives. Wearing business attire, you'll make multi-media presentations with 3-D graphs and high-tech illustrations to demonstrate your findings. How did you eliminate bias? Which flavor did the survey group prefer? Is it smart to spend the company's money on pursuing this product?

You'll benefit from Professor Quinlan's extensive experience as a marketing consultant and focus group moderator as he teaches you industry-demanded research and analysis skills. You'll use case studies of real life marketing problems in your classes. You might use a computer simulation to analyze the marketing decisions made by a company over the course of six years, then develop a plan for the company's seventh year. In other marketing courses, you might moderate a focus group for a local business's customer satisfaction survey, or develop a nationwide distribution of educational software. Adrian College marketing graduates are prepared to hit the ground running, and industry leaders such as Kellogg's, General Motors, and Eli Lilly have recently hired Adrian graduates because they have the critical thinking skills that are necessary for success in sales, marketing research, and advertising.

International Business / BA top

Drawing on his experience from operating his own consulting business, Professor Bill Bachman believes that the projects you do should be market-driven-that they should be based on the real work you'll do someday. That's why in his International Business class, you will choose a well-known firm and two different countries. It's up to you to decide which country is best for the firm to enter and what your entry strategy should be, so that you can make a professional presentation of your findings.

To give you an edge in the global market, you will be required to take at least 20 credit hours in foreign language courses. You are also strongly encouraged to spend at least one semester in a study abroad program, in a country such as Australia, Austria, China, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, or Russia. At the same time, you will benefit from the flexibility of the BBA degree curriculum, which allows in-depth study of a range of business disciplines. In addition to lending you cultural understanding, this may also lead to business experience. For instance, while studying in Mexico recently, an Adrian student designed and completed an independent study to research the effect of NAFTA on small Mexican businesses.