Five STEM and Leadership Courses You Should Know

In this blog post, I will discuss some electives most of which are not accounting, but either STEM or leadership focused.

I have invited two classmates from the Master of Accounting: Emily Pesce and T.Ike Henderson.

Emily is in the BSBA/MACC combined program and the Accounting Honors Program at Fisher and has worked as Deal Advisory & Strategy Intern for KPMG; T.Ike is graduating from Brigham Young University-Idaho and has worked with Cooper Norman.

Below are Emily's two favorite courses:

BUSMHR 7230 -  High Performing Teams: This course examines the theory and processes that make teams thrive. The course focuses on people in working environments and how effective teams can increase working efficiency. BUSMHR 7230 is taught by Dr. Schaffner, the Academic Director for the Fisher Professional Development Coaching Program.

BUSMHR 7335 - Managing Diversity: This course teaches the best practices for managing diversity in the workplace. It also delves into the importance of diversity and how individuals and organizations can create company value through diversity efforts. BUSMHR 7335 is taught by Dr. Turner, Asst. Dean and Chief Diversity Officer at Fisher College of Business.

Below are T.Ike's two favorite courses:

ACCTMIS 7220 - Financial Statement Analysis: This course will challenge you to look beyond GAAP and break down a company's financial statements. This course examines how corporations can use GAAP to their advantage and how to spot it. You will learn financial ratios you didn't know existed and use them to determine the value and health of a company. ACCTMIS 7220 and 7221 are both taught by Dr. Corona.

BUSFIN 7221 - Financial Modeling: This course is an extension of the methods you learn about in Finance II. The course aims to build Excel and Python models that assist in investment decisions. Whether it's real estate, bonds, or equities, this class will make you reconsider how you look at investment opportunities. Both BUSFIN 6212 Finance II and BUSFIN 7221 are taught by Tod Schneider, Senior Lecturer of Finance and an alumnus of the Fisher MAcc program.

Below are my favorite courses:

BUSFIN 7221 - Financial Modeling: This course has two sections in spring. While T.Ike took the normal section typically on Mondays and Wednesdays exclusively for Master of Accounting students, I chose to take the 3-week Saturday section to interact with students from other graduate programs. Professor Oglevee, the Academic Director of the Fisher Executive MBA Program, teaches my section. My section offers unparalleled experimental learning opportunities within a team setting: we are asked to build Excel models to analyze gas receipts and price an asset. Meanwhile, you learned how to write a Memo.

BUSOBA 7256 - Tools for Data Analysis: This course will teach how to use R to analyze and visualize big data in the real world. You will also learn how to analyze text data by understanding the emotion of the text and generating a word cloud. [This course is taught by Dr. Draper, Co-director of the Specialized Master in Business - Analytics program, and in my opinion, he is the best professor to learn Data Analysis]

This blog is a bit long, but I hope it is informative.