Marquette University’s #32 ranked undergraduate accounting program* has deployed a mentoring project that seeks to help first year accounting students make sense of the language of business. “We consistently find that students who are just starting out in the accounting courses are the ones who benefit the most from personalized instruction,” said department chair Dr. Kevin Rich in an article about the program on MU’s website. “While every student may need extra help at some point, freshmen don’t yet have a fundamental understanding of the business, and they are in the beginning stages of forming their college study habits. Early intervention can make a huge difference.”
The article tells the story of Kaylee Buckley, 2024 graduate of Marquette’s Master of Science in Accounting program, formerly confused freshman, and current RSMer:
Shortly after her first week of accounting classes, Kaylee Buckley called her father, sobbing. She understood nothing.
“I was in the same boat as a lot of the freshmen when I started; I felt like everyone was talking in a foreign language,” Buckley recalls.
Years later, she would find herself student ambassador to confused and overwhelmed students sitting in the position she once did.
She found that most students were confused about the same thing that puzzled her at first: industry lingo. The solution: make the terminology relatable. Instead of saying “accounts payable,” Buckley would use the analogy of a credit card bill: something that needs to be paid even if the bill isn’t due right away.
Something as simple as reviewing the vocabulary can make a world of difference to struggling students.
“A lot of students will preface their question with, ‘I know this is a stupid question,’ and I promise them it’s not,” Buckley says. “A lot of people are feeling this way, and you’re courageous for asking for that help.”
“That moment where students start to get the concept and they don’t even realize it, the times when students who got a D on a test email me to say they earned a 90 on the next one; if I could bottle that feeling up, I would,” she said.
Dr. Rich is looking to make the program more proactive going forward. Rather than waiting for students to get a D, he wants to “create a student support ecosystem that empowers everyone to seek the help they need no matter what grades they’re receiving or what issues they’re having.”
Accounting for student success [Marquette University]