The UCSB Accounting Program completed another highly successful year, continuing to graduate more than three hundred students. The primary goal of the Program is to provide a curriculum with sufficient scope and depth to graduate students who will become well-rounded, well-educated professionals. The Program offers a full range of courses, including our intense ten-week summer Professional Preparation Program to ready students for future professional practice and certification. Enrollment in this summer program has grown from thirty-eight students in 2003 to over seventy students in 2007.

We are also pleased to announce that Don Loster has designed a course in the growing field of Forensic Accounting. This course will be offered beginning in spring 2008. It will involve the application of knowledge in accounting, auditing, and finance to resolve financial issues in areas ranging from fraud and identity theft to organized crime and terrorism investigation.

Our students continue to be heavily recruited by companies including the Big Four and other regional and local accounting firms. The Big Four have designated UCSB as a key recruiting school, which allows our graduates to be hired into offices throughout the United States. In addition, in 2006 KPMG designated UCSB as one of thirty-eight “Premier Schools” in the United States where the company intends to focus its recruiting efforts and resources. This designation is based on the quality of the UCSB Accounting Program, the success of UCSB students in passing the CPA Examination, and the number of talented and successful on-campus hires from UCSB at KPMG.