ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
COURSES
AFM 101 - Introduction to Financial Accounting
Professor: Duane Kennedy
September 2006 - December 2006
This course is an introduction to financial accounting. The
preparation and use of financial statements is examined. The accounting cycle,
assets and liabilities reporting, is discussed.
This was my first class in accounting. It was a fast
paced course that covered a high level overview of accounting and financial
statements. It was difficult course if you have not taken accounting before but
if you have, it provides a good refresher of what was taught in high
school. The course was broken down into a midterm, 10 online
assignments and a final exam.
This professor was great. He is one of the most distinguished and
well known professors in the school of accounting and finance. He
was very engaging to the students and tried to make accounting as interesting
as possible.
AFM 102 - Introduction to Managerial Accounting
Professor: Anthony Atkinson
January 2007 - April 2007
This course is an introduction to the preparation and use of
accounting information for management decision-making and reporting. Cost behaviour,
cost accumulation systems and short and long-term decision models are
discussed.
Managerial accounting is very different from financial accounting
and I really enjoyed the concepts taught in this class. One of the most
important concepts I learned for future courses was how to valuate projects. It
was the first time I encountered techniques such as NPV, payback method and
IRR. This course was broken down into four assignments, two
midterms, clicker quizzes and a final exam.
The professor was very knowledgeable in the field of managerial
accounting and he is an FCMA.
AFM 131 - Introduction to Business in North America
Professor: Robert Sproule
September 2006 - December 2006
The functional areas of business: finance, personnel
administration, production, marketing, and accounting are examined within
differing organizational structures. Coverage also includes study of the
principles of effective management and the financial system as a source of
corporate capital.
This was course focused on active listening and
learning. It was very interactive for such a large class. It
provided a high level overview of different aspects of business including
marketing, financing and operations. This course was broken down into
clicker quizzes, a midterm, online discussions, peer
evaluations, final assignment and a final exam.
The professor has a lot of real world experience and has worked in
a large variety of industries. He is very focused on adding value through
unconventional methods such as discussion boards, peer evaluations and clicker
quizzes.
AFM 201 - Introduction to Professional Practice
Professor: Brad Lund (Audit) and Seema Agarwal (Tax)
September 2007 - December 2007
This course discusses auditing and taxation concepts as they
relate to professional accounting and management.
The audit portion of this course was pretty challenging. It
was a very different material than I had anticipated and very fast paced. It
required a lot of judgment and thorough understanding of the material. In
retrospect, this course was very useful for my future co-op work terms. The
course was broken down into class participation, two assignments and an
exam.
This professor was probably the worst professor I have ever had.
He seemed very disinterested in teaching and was not very open to helping
students.
The taxation portion of this course was also challenging and fast
paced. It covered the basics of personal tax including credits,
deductions and the format of tax returns. I found that the readings
and assigned problems were meaningful and very useful, especially when it came
to preparing for the exam. This course was broken down into class
participation, two assignments and an exam.
Unlike the audit professor, this professor was very helpful and
thought she was very thorough in her lectures.
AFM 231 - Business Law
Professor: Darren Charters
May 2008 - August 2008
Particular attention is given to the law relating to contracts and
business organizations. Other areas of study include sources of law, the
judicial process, real and personal property, torts, agency, credit, and
negotiable instruments.
This course was very interesting and my first AFM course that
required a lot of reading. The law cases were interesting and
provided a new light to accounting and finance. This course
increased my understanding of how the legal environment has shaped accounting
and finance standards and examples of this can be seen with independence
issues, Sarbanes-Oxley and levels of liability. This course was broken down
into a midterm, class participation, an assignment and a final exam.
The professor was a former lawyer and he was very helpful. I
often asked help about understanding legal concepts and he was very quick at
providing answers and feedback.
AFM 241 - Introduction to Business Information Technology
Professor: Theophanis Stratopoulos
May 2008 - August 2008
This course considers various aspects of information from a
business and problem-solving perspective. It is intended to provide a basic
foundation for understanding the potential benefits and problems in utilizing
information technology to improve business performance, and an appreciation for
a wide range of technology choices available, rather than a detailed
understanding of any particular hardware or software technology.
This course focused on how information technology can be used by
different industries to enhance their business strategy. This course
provided a high level understanding of information technology topics such as
databases, governance and IT balance score while it was complemented by the
business strategy topics such as porter’s five forces and generic
strategies. This course was broken down into peer evaluation, a
study guide, final assignment, class participation, midterm and a final exam.
Professor Theophanis Stratopoulos is one of the most
passionate people I have ever met. The way he presented the course was
very attention-grabbing and the fact that he adjusted the course to suit the
learning style of the students was great. He is very open to feedback and
consistently improving the course year over year.
AFM 271 - Managerial Finance 1
Professor: Ernie Cosgrove
May 2008 - August 2008
This is the first of a three course sequence. Topics covered in
the sequence include capital budgeting, asset pricing, market efficiency,
capital structure, dividend policy, short-term finance, and risk management.
Most accounting and finance students will tell you this is
probably the most challenging AFM courses taken during undergrad. This
course taught the basics on how stocks, bonds and projects are valuated. Time
value of money is not the most intuitive concept but once that aspect is
mastered then the rest of the course is straight forward. This
course was broken down into two midterms and a final exam.
This professor was very intelligent but he was not the most
interested in helping students. Often I felt he did not like our class or
enjoy teaching us. His teaching style was very dry and different.
AFM 291 - Intermediate Financial Accounting 1
Professor: Christine Wiedman
September 2007 - December 2007
A first course in intermediate accounting dealing with the theory
and practice of financial statement preparation and reporting. The emphasis
will be on asset valuation and the related impact on income measurement.
This course was challenging and focused more on the asset side of
the balance sheet. Important concepts that were taught included how to classify
investments, construction in progress, and research and development. This
was a great course in general because it gave a more in-depth insight and
provided explanations to many concepts that were vague in AFM 101. This course
was broken down into an assignment, class participation,
First thing I would like to say that this was the BEST PROFESSOR I
have ever had. She was incredibly helpful and I could see the passion
when she was teaching us. Incredibly bright woman and I would highly
recommend her for any course she teaches.
AFM 331 - Business Strategy
Professor: Nancy Vanden Bosch
May 2009 – August 2009
This course focuses on strategic management of the total
enterprise. Managers contribute to the organization through their analytical
and leadership capabilities as well as their technical expertise. The course
provides a framework for developing and implementing strategy that fits the
firm's environment, managerial values and organization.
This was a very interesting course because it was very different
than my other AFM courses. It was very case focused and not much emphasize on
the numbers. It required a lot of logic, creativity and common
sense. It was one of my most favourite courses and one that I am probably
naturally best at. This course was broken down into three assignments, class
participation, midterm, and a final exam.
The professor was recently the winner of the distinguished
teaching award at the University of Waterloo. She went above and
beyond her requirements as a professors and incorporated a lot of her real life
experiences. By far, one of the more interesting professors I have
ever met.
AFM 341 - Accounting Information Systems
Professor: Jee-hae Lim
May 2009 – August 2009
Examines the planning, requirements analysis, acquisition, and
evaluation of information systems, with an emphasis on accounting information
systems. Introduces information systems assurance concepts, and considers the
role of information technology in the improvement of business performance.
This course focuses was on how information technology is used in
the audit environment and how the accounting cycle is aligned with accounting
systems. Other topics included IT infrastructure, outsourcing and IT
security. This course is very similar to what I do at Deloitte and
the course was very useful in helping me understand the theory aspects of my
job. This course was broken down into three assignments, class participation, a
midterm, weekly quizzes and a final exam.
The professor was incredibly energetic and one of the most unique
professors I have ever had. She had very high standards for us and really
pushed me to understand the concepts given my background. At the time, it
was very stressful keeping up with her standards but retrospectively, it helped
me a lot.
AFM 361 - Taxation 1
Professor: Kenneth Klassen
May 2009 – August 2009
A continuation of AFM 201 with application emphasis on business
income, capital gains and calculation of corporate tax fact and problem
situations.
This course was very challenging and one of the biggest challenges
I have had at the university level. This course focused on personal
and corporate taxes. On the personal side, it described the
different deductions, employment benefits, credits, and employee
vs.self-employed issue. While on the corporate side, SR&ED, CCA,
tax deductible expenses and corporate tax rates. What made this
course difficult was all the rules that could be applied in a single question
and the different options you have (i.e. rollovers). This course was broken
down into two assignments, class participation, a midterm, clickers and a final
exam.
The professor was extremely experienced in the field of tax and
brought life to the classroom through his sense of humour and love for
tax. Though the course was difficult, he made it a little easier
through his expertise in teaching and communicating difficult concepts to
students. He was fair and very open to helping students do their best.
AFM 371 - Managerial Finance 2
Professor: Hongping Tan
January 2009 - April 2009
This course is a continuation of AFM 271. Topics to be explored
are covered under the listing for AFM 271.
This course gave me a much better perspective on finance.
Compared to AFM 271, this course focused more on how finance is applied to real
life. Topics covered included: IPOs, dividend policy, value of the firm,
financial instruments and mergers and acquisitions. This course was broken down
into one assignment, two online quizzes, a midterm and a final exam
The professor is fairly young and a genius in the topic of
finance. I could tell he wanted to make finance interesting and he
has a lot of potential to be an incredible professor. This is not an
easy course but he did his best at explaining models and was very passionate
about assuring that the students would do well in this course.
AFM 391 - Intermediate Financial Accounting 2
Professor: Gregory Clark
January 2009 - April 2009
This is an intermediate financial accounting course that deals
with problems related to the measurement of liabilities, measurement of income,
and the reporting and measuring of corporate equities.
This course is the other half of AFM 291 and focused more on
liability and equity side of the balance sheet. The major focus was
bonds, warranty, pensions, accounting errors and leases. This course
covered a lot of material and it is easy to fall behind. The key to
success in this course are to do all the assigned problems and making sure you
can explain the background theory of each of the questions. This course was
broken down into one assignment, four quizzes, a midterm and a final exam
The professor has taught at Laurier and he very interested in
helping students. He describes himself as a “straight shooter” where
as long as you do the homework you can do well in the course. He has
a lot of experience in teaching and used multiple means of explaining concepts
including slides, taking up problems and writing out the theory on the
blackboard.
AFM 401 – Accounting Theory
Professor: Sati P. Bandyopadhyay
September 2010 – December 2010
A
review of accounting theory as a background for applying underlying concepts to
current accounting problems. Emphasis is on current literature, with a major
term paper required.
This
course teaches the importance of accounting for making decisions in the
financial markets and evaluating management stewardship. This was a pretty
interesting course since it showed that accounting is not only mandatory but
necessary for markets (financial or labour) to function more efficiently. Lots
of interesting articles were discussed in class and enhanced the learning
environment.
The
professor is one of the nicest and most interactive professors yet. He was very
interested in making sure that each student understood but also challenged the
students to think about topic beyond what the textbook said. He did this
by encouraging intriguing questions that challenged what the academic quo
stated.
AFM 431 - Professional Ethics for Financial Managers
Professor: Sally Gunz
May 2009 – August 2009
The study of ethical and moral issues that arise in professional
lives of accountants and financial managers.
This course was probably one of the most enlightening courses I
have ever taken. It made me understand why careers in accounting and
finance are well-recognized and how important they are to the stability of the
business world. The single most important skill that an accountant
or finance professor needs is trust, without trust the profession is worthless.
A lot of interesting articles and cases were assigned in this course. This
course deepened my understanding of accounting principles more than any other
AFM course. This course was broken down into two assignments, a
final paper, class participation and a midterm.
AFM 451 - Audit Strategy
Professor: David Moylan
January 2010 - April 2010
An examination of elements of audit strategy and their
interrelationships, including financial assertions, types and sources of audit
assurance, and evidence-gathering procedures, including statistical auditing
methods, such as sampling and regression analysis.
This course covered a high level overview of auditing, mainly
financial statement audit but also brushed over internal audit concepts. We
also discussed auditing strategies for the revenue cycle both at the control
and test of detail levels. This course relates a lot to my co-op
employment. This course was broken down into class participation, a
midterm, four assignments and a final exam.
The professor was actually a former practitioner who worked in the
same office as me. He brought a lot of his personal experiences into
the course and helped deepened our understanding of vague concepts by placing
tangible examples to them. Though a bit unorganized at times, he was
very easy to relate to and definitely has a lot of potential to be an impactful
lecturer in the future.
AFM 461 –Taxation 2
Professor: Stan Laiken and Christy MacDonald
September 2010 – December 2010
Integration of topics from AFM 201 and AFM 361
with an emphasis on basic planning with the use of corporate reorganizations,
partnerships and trusts.
This course was the most challenging course I
have ever taken (at this point in time) but I believe it will be quite
useful. The course was broken down into two main portions –
corporate tax returns and rollovers. The rollovers were very interesting
as they provided creditable and useful techniques to save taxes for small
businesses and business owners.
Stan Laiken is a legend and he surely lived up
to the hype of being a very brilliant man. You could ask him literally any tax
question and he would know the answer. He was also equally entertaining with
notable shirts and energetic dances and movements.
Christy MacDonald is a person I admire as well.
A very different teaching style than Stan but she was still quite knowledge and
friendly.
AFM 471 – Cases in Corporate Finance
Professor: Alan Douglas
September 2010 – December 2010
This course builds on the theory of financial
management developed in AFM 271/371 by using cases to illustrate a variety of
corporate financial decisions.
This was an extremely interesting course. It
took our knowledge from our two previous finance courses and applied them to
real life cases. It provided me a greater appreciation of what
finance people do and the interesting debates that can arise when valuing the
worth of a company or financial securities.
Professor Douglas is an extremely intelligent
individual who provided insight on situations that I never even
considered. In terms of finance, definitely one of the smartest
individuals I have ever met.
AFM 481 - Cost Management Systems
Professor: Anthony Atkinson
January 2010 - April 2010
Consideration of more complex topics in management planning and
control. Emphasis is on traditional and contemporary cost accumulation systems
and their application in modern day organizations. Cases, simulations, projects
and presentations are the key instructional methods used to understand and
integrate the course material. At the end of the course, students will have a
solid understanding of how the correct choice of a costing model adds value to
the organization.
This course further developed on concepts learned in AFM
102. Even with the concepts that overlapped with AFM 102, there was
increased difficulty attached to them such as levels of uncertainty, risk and
additional factors that needed to be considered. Some important
concepts that I learned were job costing, costing methods, capital budgeting
and inventory valuation. It is interesting how accounting data can
be turned into decision making tools. This course was broken down into class
participation, a midterm, four assignments and a final exam.
I had the same professor for AFM 102 but he was much livelier and
more interesting. He was very engaged with our class and brought in
very interesting speakers to describe their work experience and the value of
the CMA designation. He is an extremely connected individual and I now realize
how special it is to have such an accomplished individual teach me.
AFM 482 – Performance Measure and Organization
Control
Professor: Tom Vance
September 2010 – December 2010
This course will trace the evolution of the role
of performance measurement systems in supporting areas of organization control.
Topics will include the role of both financial and nonfinancial performance
measures in: the DuPont method of control, the Harvard model of control,
internal control, contemporary approaches to governance, and strategic
management systems. After completing this course students will be able to
evaluate the nature and suitability of a proposed performance measurement
system given its design and purpose.
This was a case base course that taught us the
importance of a management control system to implement strategy. A
wide variety of different cases were presented in this course that applied the
theory taught in the course chapters. I found this course very interesting
because it provided a more holistic point of view when tackling corporate and
business decisions.
Professor Vance really facilitated the
discussion within the class and encouraged us to express opinions even if they
differed from the standard case answer. It was very friendly and energetic in
class.
AFM 491 - Advanced Financial Accounting
Professor: Shari
Mann
January 2010 - April 2010
An advanced accounting course considering specific problems of
accounting for the corporate entity, such as business combinations,
intercorporate investments, consolidated financial statements, accounting for
foreign operations and foreign currency transactions, and segment reporting.
This was the most hyped courses in terms of difficulty that I have
ever encountered. It never quite lived up the hype but it was a very difficult
course. This course covered topics relating to how you account for
different levels of investments from buying a stock to buying 100% of a company
and the different accounting issues that can arise. Also other
topics covered included foreign exchange, not-for-profit accounting and
different consolidation methods. This course was broken down
into a midterm, one assignment and a final exam.
This professor is very connected with ICAO and is very involved in
the IFRS process at that level. The way she taught is if you didn’t
prepare for class you would be completely lost and gain no value from the
lectures. She was very bright and she definitely pushed us to
improve our study habits.