Cal State Fullerton Accounting Program Teaches Students Real World Data Analysis Skills Through Alteryx Partnership | College of Business and Economics at CSUF (cal-state-fullerton-accounting-program-teaches-students-real-world-data-analysis-skills-through-alteryx-partnership)

A sculpture with twin towers and the CSUF logo in between at Cal State Fullerton near the corner of State College and Nutwood. Recognizing the significance of data analytics in the business and accounting fields of the future, Cal State Fullerton’s Department of Accounting is incorporating a platform developed by Irvine-based software company Alteryx into its curriculum.

The program will provide free software licenses to Cal State Fullerton, enabling instructors to engage students in predictive, statistical and spatial analytics using Alteryx software. The data analysis skills taught in this program will prepare business students to solve real-world business problems and give them a competitive edge when they enter the workforce.

“Our accounting curriculum has evolved into a world-class, tech-forward, real-world, experience-based model,” says April Morris, accounting lecturer, associate director of the Center for Corporate Reporting and Governance (CCRG), and instructor of the ACCT 503 – Analytics in Accounting class. “Alteryx is a great platform for students to learn – intuitive, responsive and powerful.”

By spring 2020, the platform will be fully integrated into the department’s accounting curriculum. The new initiative builds on a spring 2019 section of ACCT 503, a graduate-level “toolbox” course for data analytics and robotics process automation (RPA), which featured presentations and demonstrations of Alteryx products by industry users. In that course, students used the platform to clean and combine data for a final project.

“We are delighted to be the first accounting program in the CSU system to work directly with Alteryx in leveraging an educational platform that embraces the resources of Alteryx, including its ‘community’ feature combined with real-world data supplied through CSUF, to create a challenging and realistic educational experience,” says Vivek Mande, accounting professor and director of the Department of Accounting. “We are also very excited about the reception our programs have had with employers of all sizes and look forward to seeing what the future holds.”

For More on Mihaylo College Accounting

For more on Mihaylo College Accounting, which is one of a select group of such programs to be dually accredited by the AACSB, visit them online.

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