The business school's growing enrollment and students' renewed interest in accounting have led to a renaissance in the school's accounting department. Fall 2004 will mark the third year in a row that a full-time professor has been added to the faculty roster. The department's full-time faculty had declined to three before expanding enrollments began to justify adding full-time faculty positions. In fall 2002 associate professor Jeffrey Lippitt, Ph.D. (Penn State), accepted a tenured position in the department. A year later he was joined by visiting associate professor Eric Lewis, Ph.D. (Union), who was awarded a tenured appointment. Finally, joining IC in the coming fall will be associate professor Joanne Burress, Ph.D. (Buffalo), who has accepted a tenured accounting appointment.

In academic year 2003-4 accounting faculty members taught 2,130 credit hours in the accounting major, the business administration major, and the M.B.A. program. On average, accounting professors taught 444 credit hours a year per full-time-equivalent (FTE) faculty member. Enrollment data for the undergraduate business and accounting majors are provided in the table.

Next fall (2005) the M.B.A. program will be expanded to include a New York State-approved major in professional accountancy. While most of the coursework in the new program will be common with the existing curriculum, the new program will provide opportunities for students with bachelor's degrees in accounting to specialize in graduate-level accounting courses through a new track of electives.

The program has been designed to comply with New York State's requirement that applicants for the CPA examination will have completed required courses in business and accounting and will have taken 30 credit hours of instruction beyond the requirement for the baccalaureate degree. New York State, which is one of only five states that has not yet implemented this so-called 150-credit-hour rule, will implement that requirement in 2009.

This means that students who elect to major in accounting this fall and who intend to pursue careers in professional accountancy must plan on enrolling in an M.B.A. program. Therefore, starting this fall the accounting major will be a 4+1 program, and a revised baccalaureate accounting curriculum will go into effect.