When Mark Chase, MS Finance ’98, began his undergraduate studies at the University of Maine, he did so as an engineering student.
After determining that engineering was not the path he wanted to pursue, he transferred to the business school, where he found accounting to really click. Specifically, he enjoyed working with numbers and learning about all the different accounting processes. Most impactful, though, was that he learned accounting was not just about the numbers. It was how businesses told their stories—their successes, their failures, and their future plans and prospects.
“Accounting, actually, is a language,” he says. “It’s the language of business.” But perhaps the best part of getting an accounting degree was the vast array of rewarding jobs he could get with it.
Since the Survey of Accounting course he teaches at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University is required for all business students, many of them are not majoring in accounting. This is extra motivation for Chase to open their eyes to what a great field accounting could potentially be for them to pursue.
“As an accountant, you get to be in the details of every single company, and you really get an appreciation for what makes a company work,” he says. “When I was 24 years old, I was sitting down with CFOs and CEOs twice my age at very large companies and having conversations with them about their business. I learned so much and made so many connections that have helped me throughout my career.”
After working his way up to senior manager at Baker Tilly, Chase joined Cordia Partners (now part of Cherry Bekaert), eventually being promoted to partner. While at Cordia, he learned that one of his clients was in need of a senior-level accounting and finance leader. The timing was right, so he decided to leave public accounting for good and pursue a career in private industry. He has been in the same position now for 14 years.
When Chase first began teaching, he didn’t think he would enjoy it nearly as much as he did—and still does. As an active practitioner in the field that he teaches, his students take his class with the knowledge and confidence that they’re learning what’s current and how the lessons learned in the textbook are applied in real life.
He finds that his students are driven to do well not only in the class but in life, and many of them stay after class to pick his brain for advice and talk over academic and career options they are considering. In fact, it is not uncommon for Chase to find students switching their major to accounting after learning how important accounting is to all businesses and realizing the many career options available to accounting majors.
Chase’s teaching career began when he connected with one of his mentors and a partner at Baker Tilly, John Niehoff, BS Accounting ’84, who was on the Accounting Advisory Council and helped reconnect Chase with his alma mater to teach.
A decade and a half later, Mark Chase remains energized by getting his students to open their eyes to opportunities in the accounting field and bringing real-world examples into the classroom as frequently as possible.
“Coming from the public accounting world and still working in the private world brings a different perspective,” he says. “I want them to do as well as possible in the class, but I also want them to take with them some practical examples of what they’re learning and how they apply in real life.”
As a result, many more students leave Chase’s classroom inspired to see accounting as a gateway to understanding and shaping the business world.