Accounting
Northwestern's accounting major is built upon a liberal arts approach and is recommended for students who wish to pursue a career in public, private or governmental accounting. The CPA exam pass rates of NWC's accounting graduates are consistently among the state's best and in the top 10 among the 120 members of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. In 2017, Northwestern had the nation's 2nd-best CPA exam pass rate, 89.3%, among all institutions with at least 10 candidates. There is a strong job market for accounting majors, and Northwestern's graduates consistently get jobs at Big 4 firms. As a department, we recommend experience in the field through credited internships.
Business and economics department homepage
Major requirements:
ACC 215 - Principles of Financial Accounting
(4 credits) This course covers the basic introduction to financial management and financial accounting, including an understanding of the concepts, principles and practices in these areas.
ACC 216 - Principles of Managerial Accounting
(3 credits) This course covers the basic concepts, principles and practice in managerial accounting, including the use of accounting in management decision- making. Prerequisite: ACC215.
ACC 306 - Cost Accounting
(3 credits) This course involves the study of cost systems and their use in decision-making by management. Emphasis is placed on the areas of cost-volume-profit analysis, job-order and process costing systems, budgets and standards, cost allocation and capital budgeting. Prerequisites: ACC215 and 216.
ACC 307 - Individual Income Tax
(4 credits) This is an introduction to current federal and state taxation laws and practices. The emphasis is on the federal income tax and its impact on accounting procedures and management decision-making. Prerequisites: ACC215 and 216, or permission of chair of the business department.
ACC 310 - Non-Profit and Governmental Accounting
(2 credits) This course provides coverage of accounting and reporting standards for not-for-profit organizations and state and local governments. It includes accounting for hospitals, college and universities, voluntary health and welfare organizations, and others. Coverage will also be provided for governmental, propriety and fiduciary type funds used in governments. Prerequisites: ACC215 and ACC216 or permission of instructor.
ACC 315 - Intermediate Accounting I
(4 credits) This course is a study of the development of accounting principles and practices as they apply to financial statements. Emphasis is placed on the development of the theory used in accounting practice. Prerequisites: ACC215 and 216.
ACC 316 - Intermediate Accounting II
(4 credits) This course is a continuation of the accounting principles and practices covered in Intermediate Accounting I. Special emphasis is on stockholder's equity and dilutive securities, special issues related to income measurement, and preparation and analysis of financial statements. Prerequisite: ACC315.
ACC 415 - Auditing
(4 credits; alternate years, consult department) This course studies the internal control procedures in modern business, the development of auditing standards and procedures, the theory behind the development of such auditing standards and procedures, and how these auditing standards and procedures are applied to the public accountancy field. Special emphasis is on the auditor's decision-making process. Prerequisites: ACC315 and 316, or permission of chair of the business department.
ACC 418 - Advanced Accounting
(4 credits; alternate years, consult department) This course is a study of accounting for partnerships, business combinations, affiliated companies, government entities and nonprofit organizations. Prerequisites: ACC315 and 316, or permission of chair of the business department.
ACC 430WI - Entity Tax and Law
(4 credits) (Writing intensive) This course is a continuation of Individual Income Tax and Business Law. This course will focus on the legal and tax differences between partnerships, LLC's, and the corporate business structure as well as how those differences impact management decision-making. Other topics covered may include federal regulation of business, estate planning and bankruptcy. Prerequisites: ACC307 and BUS321 or permission of instructor. Cross-Rerenced: Cross-referenced in business.
ACC 490SR - Senior Seminar in Accounting
(2 credits) This course serves as the capstone to the accounting major at Northwestern College. Through readings, journals, papers and oral presentations, students will reflect on their learning and connect it to their life after college as an accountant. Senior accounting students will have the opportunity to evaluate their success in meeting the goals of NWCore,synthesize their curricular and co-curricular learning experiences, and articulate the distinctives of being a Christian accountant. Prerequisites: Senior status, ACC315 and ACC316 and in the last year at NWC; or permission of instructor.
BUS 321 - Business Law
(4 credits) This course is designed to acquaint students with the legal principles which, when followed, allow business transactions to run smoothly and with predictability. The topics include contracts, agency and property law, plus criminal law, torts, the Uniform Commercial Code, the litigation process and alternatives to litigation. Both business and non-business students can benefit from this basic course on Anglo-American law.
Cognate requirements:
CSC 120 - Business Data Analysis Using Spreadsheets
(2 credits) This course teaches students to use spreadsheets to organize, calculate, analyze, and report on business data. Topics include using built-in statistical, logical, lookup, and financial functions, writing custom formulas and conditional formulas, using built-in data analysis tools, presenting information with charts and graphs, creating PivotTables and PivotCharts, exporting and importing data to and from other applications, sharing data on the World Wide Web, and using macros to automate tasks. The course will culminate by developing key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboards.
CSC 130 - Business Data Management Using Databases
(2 credits) The course teaches students to use relational databases to organize, query, analyze, and report on business data. Topics include the relational database model, creating database tables and setting appropriate table options, querying tables to gain insight into data, aggregating and summarizing queries, and creating reports to professionally present and visualize data.Importing and exporting data, sharing data over the Internet, and automating tasks using macros will also be covered.
CSC 210 - Accounting Information Systems
(2 credits) This course explores the concepts of information systems support for accounting applications. AIS introduces conceptual data modeling, transaction processing systems, enterprise resource planning systems, business processes, documentation, computer security, internal control systems and cyper ethics from an accountant?s perspective. Prerequisites: ACC215 and CSC102, or permission of instructor.
MAT 117QR - Applied Statistics for Management
(3 credits) (NWCore option under Quantitative Reasoning) The course is designed to study statistical methodology commonly used in business including descriptive statistics (the nature of data and how to summarize it), basic probability concepts, and inferential statistics (making claims or decisions from one or more sets of data using confidence intervals and multiple types of hypothesis testing). Prerequisite: ACT math score of 20 or above (SAT 510 or above), ALEKS placement exam score of 46 or above, concurrent enrollment in MAT100, or permission of instructor. Note: Students may receive credit for only one course among MAT 116QR, MAT 117QR and MAT 208QR.
Choose one course:
MAT 111QR - Calculus for Management, Life and Social Sciences
(3 credits) (NWCore option under Quantitative Reasoning) This course is a study of functions, limits, derivatives and integrals with an emphasis on techniques and applications in business, biology, health, and social sciences.Prerequisites: C- or higher in MAT109QR, or an ACT math score of at least 22 (SAT 550 or above), or permission of mathematics department chair.Note: Meets four times per week.
MAT 112QR - Calculus I
(4 credits) (NWCore option under Quantitative Reasoning) This course is a study of functions, limits, derivatives and integrals with a strong emphasis on both theory and applications. Prerequisites: C- or higher in MAT109, or an ACT math score of at least 24 (SAT 570 or above), or permission of mathematics department chair. Note: Meets four times per week.
