ACC 6322 Accounting Internship

ACC 6322 – Accounting Internship

ACC 6322 is an elective course of the Master of Professional Accountancy Program (MPAC) offered by the Marilyn Davies College of Business at the University of Houston-Downtown. It provides students of this program a solid base upon which to build their successful careers. They can enjoy the advantages of paid internships at local and U.S. industries and CPA firms, while working, learning, and growing within the accounting profession and earning academic credit. Through guidance provided by the internship coordinator and training and supervision of the employers, UHD students will be exposed to the full experience of practical accounting wisdom and perspective. They will be able to apply the knowledge and skills they have acquired in other MPAC courses to a real work professional accounting setting. They will be able to demonstrate professional communication skills by articulating the real world experience they have acquired from the internship and demonstrate knowledge of working in a team. To that end, students learn employer-valued critical skills by working in the accounting field for part or all of a semester and thereby receive a more complete and reality-based accounting education.

General Requirements

1.  Students who are interested in pursuing an internship, must secure an internship position on their own and submit course application materials following these steps:
2. Log on to www.uhd.edu/gatorhired,  select ACC 6322
3. Select “My Internships" from the menu located on the left side of the page
4. Select “Add New Experience"
5. Provide the required information & documents (i.e. application essay, unofficial transcript, offer letter, job description)
6. Complete the Covid-19 Acknowledgement form
   
   All students who gain an internship and wish to receive course credit must sign the Internship Participation Acknowledgment which states the following "I acknowledge that there may be risks associated with my participation in this activity which may include, but are not limited to, illness or personal injury caused by exposure to illnesses (including but not limited to communicable diseases such as influenza and COVID-19), infections, and other potential issues typically associated with such settings." Acknowledgment form will be provided to the student.
7. Credit for an internship is given only for a minimum of 120 hours in total via (a) a full-time accounting job of at least 40 hours per week that lasts at least 3 consecutive weeks or more or (b) a part-time accounting job of at least 20 hours per week that lasts 6 consecutive weeks.
8. An internship may continue for a full semester, but special permission from the faculty coordinator is necessary for a longer period and such permission is granted only in unusual circumstances. An internship has a definite beginning and end and is not viewed as a part-time or full-time job that continues until graduation.
9. No credit is granted for work that a student has already been performing. An internship must convey a completely new viewpoint.
10. The employer may be a public accounting firm or an accounting department of a company or not-for-profit/governmental entity, but in every case the employer and intern are held strictly to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy (TSBPA) requirement, “the accounting knowledge gained is equal to or greater than the knowledge gained in a traditional accounting classroom setting."
11. A student may take no more than two three-hour course, apart from the internship, during the term of full-time internship and no more than three three-hour courses during the term of a part-time internship. Students whose scholarships, grants, or other financial assistance require them to enroll for at least 9 semester credit hours during the fall and spring semester, should consider summer internships if available.
12. Each intern is expected to receive compensation equivalent to that earned by accounting interns statewide, except when working for some non-profit entities. Generally, such compensation (except perhaps for fringe benefits) is about the same as that earned by a new accounting graduate.
13. Internships are graded on a credit (S-Satisfactory/pass) (U-Unsatisfactory/fail) basis. Three credit hours are granted to an intern who satisfactorily meets the course requirements.
14. No student may register for an internship without first receiving the approval of the faculty coordinator and the department chair by signature on the Internship Application Form.

No exceptions are made to these general requirements.

Specific Requirements

The Department of Accounting internship is designed to meet the criteria promulgated by the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy (TSBPA). Thus, the following specific requirements (from Section 511.57 of the State Board's rules) also apply:

• Only jobs offering a variety of intensive accounting work assignments qualify.
• The student may not earn more than three semester credit hours towards their upper-level accounting hours requirement for any amount of internship work.

Additional Items to Consider

Each student should consider the following before registering for an accounting internship:

• Scholarships, grants, and/or other financial assistance might be reduced or eliminated because of the decrease in course load required by an internship or because of compensation received from the employer, or for other reasons. Each student must determine the possible consequences and weigh the advantages and disadvantages before applying for an internship.
• The required paper must be a formal composition demonstrating the knowledge gained from the work performed and the employer's training program. It should describe various tasks assigned, how the entire experience integrates with the intern's academic work, how academic work prepared the student, what academic work could have helped prepare the student, what the student is bringing back to academic work from the internship, and also contain the intern's evaluation of the internship. Organization, spelling, and grammar are important. Because the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy may request a copy, the paper must meet high standards.
• If the student and/or the employer do not complete the requirements specified by the last day of the semester, the student will be given a grade of “incomplete" or “fail" for the internship. In certain cases, this may cause graduation to be delayed until a later semester, even if the student has already applied for graduation. It is the student's responsibility to ensure that the faculty coordinator receives all documentation in a timely fashion and in acceptable condition.
• In the unfortunate event that a student is unable to meet all of the above requirements, it is the student's responsibility to drop the class by the regularly scheduled date for withdrawing from classes during the semester.