The official course descriptions are listed in the University of Virginia 2011-2012 Graduate Record.
Graduate Courses
GCOM 5871 - Communication Strategies for Business Professionals
GCOM 7220 - International Finance
GCOM 7310 - Strategic Business Advising and Communication
GCOM 7320 - Accounting Policy
GCOM 7330 - Enterprise Risk Management and Consulting
GCOM 7340 - Special Topics in Financial Reporting
GCOM 7341 - Accounting for Derivatives
GCOM 7350 - Special Topics in Auditing, Assurance, and Ethics
GCOM 7351 - Special Topics in International Accounting
GCOM 7371 - F/S Analysis and Valuation
GCOM 7390 - Negotiations
GCOM 7400 - Leading for Results in the Accounting Profession
GCOM 7410 - Tax Research
GCOM 7420 - Taxes and Business Strategy
GCOM 7430 - Taxation of Partnerships and Flow-Through Entities
GCOM 7440 - Taxation of Corporations and their Shareholders Transactions
GCOM 7480 - Legal Liability and the Regulation of Accountants
GCOM 7760 - Real Estate Investments and Analysis
GCOM 7770 - Information Technology in Finance
GCOM 7780 - Project Management
GCOM 7480x - Independent Study and Supervised Research
Undergraduate Courses
COMM 5100 - Accounting Information Systems
COMM 5140 - Strategic Cost Management
COMM 5130 - Advanced Financial Accounting
COMM 5460 - Federal Taxation II
COMM 5700 - Financial Trading
GCOM 5871 – Communication Strategies for Business Professionals
Participants will sharpen speaking and writing skills for professional situations related to their areas of concentration. The will also learn strategies for structuring and delivering persuasive material for a variety of audiences and engage in some of the most important conversations taking place in business today that cut across all areas. These may include globalization and emerging communication technologies.
GCOM 7220 – International Finance
This course takes an integrated approach to the study of the global financial system, capital and foreign exchange markets, risk management, and the dynamics that impact investors, financial institutions, corporations and other market participants. Drawing on a combination of theory, practical experience, and case studies, we also try to understand the behavior of global financial markets within a broader set of economic and geopolitical considerations.
GCOM 7310 – Strategic Business Advising and Communication
This course covers the entire spectrum of business risks facing companies in a global economy. The course focuses on how to build an enterprise risk management process that includes understanding risk and decision making, strategy and objectives, risk identification, risk assessment, risk response, controls, and monitoring. The course looks at international risk frameworks, international and U.S. regulatory requirements related to risk, and international and U.S. stock exchange requirements. The course also ties the enterprise risk management process into corporate governance, shareholder value and disclosures to shareholders.
GCOM 7320 – Accounting Policy
This course will cover the theory and practice of corporate financial reporting. It will highlight the development of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and accounting policy choices from two perspectives.
GCOM 7330 – Enterprise Risk Management and Consulting
The course looks at the strategic, operational, and financial risks that organizations face. Through case discussions, the process of risk identification, risk assessment, and risk monitoring is covered.
GCOM 7340 – Special Topics in Accounting: Financial Reporting
The purpose of this course is to expand participants' knowledge of financial reporting and to familiarize them with topics currently of interest to the accounting profession, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. To achieve these objectives, the course will examine accounting issues from two perspectives. First, we will explore financial reporting and financial reporting issues from a user perspective. This perspective should enable participants to understand the significance of financial statement components more completely and will facilitate their future performance in their financial statement analysis course. Second, we will examine the authoritative accounting literature underlying acceptable accounting choices. As accounting professionals, participants will often be faced with ambiguous or unclear accounting issues. This perspective will improve their ability to conduct financial reporting research and to provide concise and thoughtful resolutions to these issues. The perspective will also provide a foundation for future graduate course in accounting policy. The pedagogy for the course includes lectures, readings, illustrative class examples, research cases, memorandum preparations and class presentations.
GCOM 7341 – Accounting for Derivatives
This course develops a framework for understanding the nature, uses, and financial reporting of derivatives. The first section of the course discusses the various types of derivatives, including their uses in business settings and the methods used to determine their "fair value."
GCOM 7350 – Special Topics in Auditing, Assurance, and Ethics
This course provides students with an integrative exposure to topics that reflect current professional practices and best practices as identified by regulatory bodies, other profession-related organizations, academics, and practitioners. State-of-the-art topics will be covered primarily through (a) professional and academic readings and (b) exposure to practitioners and other experts. The course will focus on the integration of new topics with material learned in other courses and placing topics in the context of auditing and assurance.
GCOM 7351 – Special Topics in International Accounting
The role of accounting in international contexts will be explored, with the objective to help students become familiar with regulatory, cultural, and business environment issues that affect and are affected by accounting and the accounting profession. Specific topics will vary from semester to semester, but the course will likely include an international travel component and interactions with many international parties.
GCOM 7371 – F/S Analysis and Valuation
This course will provide students with a framework that uses financial statement data to analyze a company’s business and determine an intrinsic value for that company. The framework developed can be applied in a variety of decision contexts, including those faced by creditors, security analysts, investment bankers, firm managers, and auditors who must judge the firm’s performance and communicate with external investors.
GCOM 7390 – Negotiations
This course introduces students to the theory and practice of negotiation. Students will develop an understanding of the structure of the negotiation, the interests of the other party, the opportunities and barriers to creating and claiming value on a sustainable basis, and the range of possible moves and countermoves.
GCOM 7400 – Leading for Results in the Accounting Profession
The course will focus on key issues facing professionals, professional service firms and the entire profession. We will hear from many leaders in the profession about keys to success--both in today’s environment and in the future. A primary objective of the course will be to expose students to important issues that will be critical for success in the future in terms of both personal career issues and profession-wide developments.
GCOM 7410 – Tax Research
This course is designed to equip students with the special investigative skills, and the technical tools, techniques, and insights required to analyze, interpret, summarize, and present complex financial, tax, accounting, and business related issues in a manner that is both understandable and supported by documentary evidence. This course has been designed to expose students to the various statutory, administrative, and judicial sources of the tax law. Case studies are used throughout the course to assist students in developing and refining their proficiency in identifying issues, locating and interpreting pertinent authority, and effectively and professionally communicating their conclusions. Students learn how to use several commercially available research tools (LEXIS/NEXIS, RIA CheckPoint, etc.), analytical tools (e.g., financial modeling tools and simulation tools), and presentation tools more creatively, more efficiently, and more effectively.
GCOM 7420 – Taxes and Business Strategy
The course will provide a framework for understanding how taxation influences asset prices, equilibrium returns, and the form and content of contractual agreements. This is achieved by integrating the tax law with fundamentals of corporate finance and microeconomics. In addition, the course focuses more clearly on the economic consequences of alternative contractual arrangements than on the precise tax laws governing the arrangements.
GCOM 7430 – Taxation of Partnerships and Flow-Through Entities
This case-oriented, transaction-based course addresses the various legal, business, and tax issues arising in connection with the start-up of new business and with the formation, operation, distributions, reorganization, and termination of liability companies, partnerships, S corporations, and other conduit entities (e.g., real estate investment trusts and mutual funds). The course provides in-depth coverage of the technical rules of Subchapters K and S and places special emphasis on the identification and implementation of tax-planning strategies available to conduit entities and their owners. The course contains modules on entrepreneurship and accounting for partnership transactions.
GCOM 7440 – Taxation of Corporations and their Shareholders Transactions
This case-oriented, transaction-based course addresses the various business, tax, and accounting issues arising in connection with the formation, operation, and termination of domestic corporations and their shareholders. The course provides in-depth coverage of the technical rules of Subchapter C, and places special emphasis on the identification and implementation of tax planning strategies available to corporations and their shareholders.
GCOM 7480 – Legal Liability and the Regulation of Accountants
This course aims to familiarize students with the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct that will guide much of their professional life. The course also introduces students to a web of state and federal laws–including especially federal securities laws administered by the SEC and the newly created PCAOB, and federal tax laws administered by the IRS.
GCOM 7760 – Real Estate Investments and Analysis
This course develops an analytical framework by which individuals and institutions can make real estate investment and financing decisions. It emphasizes theory, concept building, financial modeling, and practical real estate applications and uses the case method to illustrate implementation of an analytical framework.
GCOM 7770 – Information Technology in Finance
This course provides students with an introduction to business systems, with a particular emphasis on applications in finance and accounting. It introduces students to the systems development process and the challenges involved in building high-quality systems efficiently and reliably while providing hands-on skills in state-of-the-art technologies (e.g., C# and Visual Studio .Net).
GCOM 7780 – Project Management
This course covers the basic processes related to the effective management of projects, including feasibility assessment, resource analysis, estimation of time, effort and cost, scheduling, team management, risk management, and implementation planning. The course is taught in the context of analyzing and managing the design of business processes in support of business strategy including business requirements analysis, process modeling, and design.
GCOM 7480x – Independent Study and Supervised Research
Students taking this course will explore areas and issues of special interest that are not otherwise covered in the graduate curriculum. This course is offered at the discretion of the supervising professor. In addition to other requirements imposed by the instructor, the course requires a final paper of publishable ‘law review’ quality be completed and submitted prior to the end of the semester.
COMM 5100 – Accounting Information Systems
This course is designed to achieve the following objectives: design and use accounting information systems; learn COSO, COBIT, and the foundations for building business controls and managing business risk; understand IT governance in an organization and how IT controls and governance relate to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; understand how IT controls and risks must be integrated into a company’s overall risk profile; and design and implement control systems.
COMM 5140 – Strategic Cost Management
This course explores the roles of accounting information in strategically positioning the firm and in improving performance and examines cost management problems and practices in U.S. and selected foreign firms. The course primarily deals with activity-based cost management, kaizen, target costing, and the balanced scoreboard. Additional topics include the theory of constraints, the strategic value chain, the half-life metric for improvement, and the role of accounting in managing quality.
COMM 5130 – Advanced Financial Accounting
This course covers accounting and financial reporting for business combinations (including consolidated financial statements), international accounting issues, foreign currency translation, reorganizations and liquidations, accounting requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and accounting for partnerships. It emphasizes the conceptual understanding of major issues and technical accounting requirements.
COMM 5460 – Federal Taxation II
This course analyzes the federal income tax law and its application to corporations, shareholders, partnerships, partners, and estate and gift transactions. The course also considers the basic concepts and tax attributes relating to alternative forms of operating a business and provides the basic skills necessary to do tax research.
COMM 5700 – Financial Trading
This course examines the nature and influence of trading on financial market prices. Particular attention is directed to the role of noise in financial markets; the psychology of participants in financial markets; the identification of potential profitable trading opportunities; back office processing of trades; the management of the trading function; and artificial neural networks and AI expert trading systems. Mock pit trading sessions are held to give firsthand experience in simulated pit trading environments and illustrate some of the skills necessary for successful trading.