Associate Professor of Business
Bachelor of Arts
(Staging) Accounting (V2)
Major | Minor
At Goshen College, this is Accounting…
Turn what an organization does into numbers other people can trust. Trust that is enough to act on.
The Accounting major at Goshen College is a 56-credit undergraduate major that trains you to build those numbers, not just read them. You’ll learn the full accounting cycle, from a single transaction to a finished set of financial statements. You’ll learn how organizations use accounting information to budget, price, and decide. You’ll learn individual and business taxation. And you’ll learn auditing: the discipline that gives financial statements their credibility, and the reason the CPA license exists at all.
The major starts at the beginning — most students arrive with no prior accounting coursework — but it is cumulative and technical from there. Each course builds on the last, so the sequence matters more than it does in most majors. All this practice and rigor over 4 years to make sure that business’ can count on you and the numbers you stand by.
What the work looks like
- Build the full cycle. Take a transaction all the way through to a finished financial statement, and understand what every line means and where it came from.
- Account for decisions, not just history. Use cost and managerial accounting to inform budgeting, pricing, and the calls managers actually have to make.
- Handle tax and audit. Work through individual and business tax law, and learn the audit process that gives outside financial statements their credibility.
You don’t have to already be “a numbers person.” You have to be willing to get precise, every time, about what the numbers actually say.
Outside of one required experience-focused course, there’s essentially one path through the degree. That’s not a limitation — it’s the point. Every accounting employer, and every state board of accountancy, is checking for the same core competencies, and the major is built to deliver exactly those, in the right order.
If you’re aiming at the CPA license, corporate finance, auditing, or a firm that will trust you with someone else’s numbers, this is the major built for that.
Why Study Accounting at Goshen College?
The value of an accountant’s work is that people trust it — and here, that trust is treated as the point of the major, not a footnote to it.
An auditor’s signature means something because it’s backed by judgment, not just procedure. A set of financial statements is only as good as the honesty and rigor behind them. Accounting is one of the few professions built entirely on being the person other people can rely on to get the numbers right and say so honestly when they don’t add up. At Goshen, that’s not assumed — it’s taught directly, alongside the technical material, as part of what it means to do the work well.
So from your first course, you’re learning the standard technical core — the cycle, the statements, the cost systems, the tax code, the audit process — and you’re also learning to ask what a set of numbers is for and who is relying on them being right. That combination is what state boards of accountancy, firms, and employers are actually screening for when they interview a candidate: someone technically sound and genuinely trustworthy with what they’re handed.
It’s also a small program inside a small college. The faculty member walking you through intermediate accounting is the same person writing your recommendation letter and helping you plan your CPA timeline. You won’t be a seat number here.
What sets it apart
- Ethics built into the technical work. Personal values and professional judgment are part of the coursework itself, not a separate unit bolted onto the accounting sequence.
- A real path to licensure. Indiana requires 120 credit hours to sit for the CPA exam, and licensing requirements vary by state — your advisor helps you map a plan for the license you’re actually pursuing, wherever that is.
- A fast track to the MBA. Once you’ve completed 60 undergraduate credit hours with a 2.50 GPA or better, you can begin coursework in Goshen’s MBA program — a real option for reaching the 150-hour threshold many states require for licensure, without adding years.
- Faculty who know your name. In classes this size, the professor grading your audit case is the one helping you plan your next step — the internship, the firm, the exam.
Accounting graduates leave with genuine range: public accounting, corporate finance, taxation, auditing, compliance, risk management, financial services, analytics, executive leadership, and academia are all live paths from this degree, along with graduate study in accounting, business, law, and related fields.
Common Questions About the Accounting Major
It’s a 56-credit undergraduate major that prepares you to build, analyze, tax, and audit an organization’s financial statements — covering financial and managerial accounting, information systems, taxation, auditing, and the business and economics foundation that surrounds them. You declare it with your academic advisor, and the course catalog lists the current requirements.
No. Most students begin with no prior accounting coursework — the major starts at the fundamentals. What it does require is a willingness to work through a technical, cumulative sequence where each course builds directly on the last.
You cannot major in both business and accounting since their courses heavily overlap.
Yes, that’s the path most students are on.The licensing requirements vary by state, so the right plan depends on where you intend to practice. Your advisor can help you build that plan, and Goshen’s 4+1 MBA pathway (available once you’ve completed 60 credit hours with a 2.50 GPA) is a common way students reach the additional hours without losing time.
Fifty-six credit hours, sequenced deliberately: foundational business and accounting courses in the first two years, the technical core — intermediate accounting, taxation, cost accounting — building through the middle years, and auditing and the capstone in the final year. There’s essentially one choice point in the whole plan: a required experience-focused course, which you can fulfill through an internship or another applied, hands-on placement arranged with faculty.
Both, deliberately. You’ll work through real case studies in cost accounting and auditing, and the required experience-focused course puts you in an actual accounting or business environment before you graduate. Many students land that placement, or a job offer, well before commencement.
Internships with CPA firms and other large businesses let you build your resume before you graduate, so you leave with work you can point to, not just a transcript. Students have previously interned at EY, RSM, Eli Lilly, Crowe and Kruggle Lawton. Many sign while they are still in college then go on to work for these companies as CPAs
This experience leads to Public accounting, corporate finance, taxation, auditing, compliance, risk management, financial services, analytics, executive leadership and academia as common paths, along with graduate study in accounting, business, law, or related fields. The degree is built to open the CPA track specifically, but it doesn’t require you to take it.
Scholarships make up a large portion of Goshen financial aid packages, which average almost $26,000 per student, not counting work-study or loans. As students in a business program, accounting majors may also qualify for endowed awards including the Sauder Scholarship and the Gorsline Scholarship. Run the net price calculator to see your own number, then talk it through with a real person in the financial aid office.
Jerrell Richer
Professor of Economics
Carl Kreider Chair and Co-Director of Global EngagementEyob Zeleke
Assistant Professor of Information Technology
Michelle Horning
Professor of Accounting
Program Director
Department ChairAlysha Liljeqvist
Associate Professor of Business
Jason Harrison
Assistant Professor of Business
Jorge Montenegro Martinez
Assistant Professor of Business
Andrew Hartzler
Professor of Accounting
