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Dr. Reanna Berry

Thanks to the efforts of two faculty members in its School of Business, Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) has achieved an impressive, worldwide ranking for research in accounting education.

Dr. Reanna Berry, assistant professor of accounting, and Dr. P. Wesley Routon, associate professor of economics, co-authored a paper titled, “Soft skill change perceptions of accounting majors: Current practitioner views versus their own reality,” which appeared in the Journal of Accounting Education, Vol. 53, in December 2020.

Analyzing data on nearly 500,000 college students from more than 600 colleges and universities, Berry and Routon studied the degree to which accounting majors are gaining 15 different soft skills, such as leadership, teamwork and interpersonal communication, in addition to accounting competency.

“We found that accounting majors are estimated to be an impressive 46% more likely to report they learned a lot about their field of study, compared to other business majors and on average,” Berry said. “At the other end of the skill spectrum, leadership is the area where accounting majors most often report skill deficits.”

The paper earned its authors and GGC rankings in the Brigham Young University (BYU) Accounting Rankings system, considered the leading authority in classifying the world’s top accounting research. These rankings are divided into topic categories, as well as six-, 12- and 20- year time periods.

In the 2020 BYU Accounting Rankings, Berry and Routon rank 50th for individual researchers in the Accounting Education Research category for the last six years.

Dr. Wesley Routon

Their work led to GGC ranking 36th in the last six years in the Accounting Education Research category. GGC is tied with prominent universities such as Harvard and Stanford.

This marks the first time GGC and School of Business (SBA) faculty have been ranked in the Accounting Education Research category.

“SBA faculty excel in the classroom and in their research activities,” said Dr. Tyler Yu, dean of the AACSB-accredited SBA. “Our performance in the BYU Accounting Rankings demonstrates that our faculty produce world-class research.”

“It is easy to do great work when you have great colleagues,” Berry said. “The SBA supports relevant and rigorous research but allows us, as researchers, the freedom to address interesting questions.”

Learn more about accounting at Georgia Gwinnett College.