Accounting Systems
claims earliest contribution to Broad School history

The Accounting department at Michigan State University (MSU) officially started only about 60 years ago, when accounting was first offered as a major.

However, to be generous, the Broad School's current accounting dynasty could trace its history to J. G. Ramsdell, who is listed in the 1861 academic catalogs as teaching bookkeeping and commercial law. Ramsdell's name disappears from the catalog the next year, but similar, if sporadic, accounting course listings trace a clear path to today's outstanding program.

Faculty leadership

The department includes faculty experts such as Alvin Arens, PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor of Accounting, the Broad School's first endowed professor and coauthor of one of the most widely used accounting textbooks for three decades, Auditing: An Integrated Approach. Kathy Petroni, Deloitte/Michael Licata Professor of Accounting, publishes the kind of research that gets noticed, such as her coauthored paper, "What insiders know about future earnings and how they use it: Evidence from insider trades," which was the subject of recent pieces in The New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

Under the leadership of Susan Haka, Ernst & Young Professor, and Michael Shields, Eli Broad Professor, the Broad School has become an internationally recognized center for research on management accounting issues. The Broad School recently became one of three sites, along with Copenhagen Business School and the University of New South Wales, that hosts a rotating annual international conference, the Global Management Accounting Research Symposium, funded in part by KPMG International.

Recognition of excellence

The department's information systems faculty has grown and increased its reputation as well: in 2005, the Broad School was named among the top 50 global centers for technology management research by the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT). At the same time, Michigan State University provided initial funding for a Center for the Leadership of the Digital Enterprise, led by V. Sambamurthy, Eli Broad Professor of Technology.

In U.S. News & World Reports' annual survey, the department's undergraduate programs were ranked seventeenth and its graduate programs were ranked thirtieth. In the widely recognized Public Accounting Report for 2004, the Broad School's undergraduate accounting programs were ranked tenth and graduate accounting programs were ranked ninth.

• Ranjani Krishnan