The Spiceland/Sepe/Tomassini Story

David Spiceland, Jim Sepe, and Larry Tomassini wrote Intermediate Accounting because they found their students struggling with the intermediate accounting course. Many of their students were 19 and 20-year-olds without the business background to understand the business transactions underlying most of the difficult intermediate accounting concepts such as leases and pensions.

Students were able to memorize how to do journal entries but they didn't understand the big picture. For example, they didn't understand why you would lease rather than purchase a product using a note.

Students also struggled because they found intermediate texts dense, boring, and without clear explanation of how intermediate accounting ties to the real world. These texts also lacked the pedagogy of the financial texts they used the previous year.

The authors began to write a text that would eliminate these problems for students. The big picture was their focus, and they built the organization of the text, as well as each chapter, around it. They found that this gave students a framework from which to more easily understand concepts and procedures. Also, they opened each chapter by focusing on an easy example so that students are exposed to the business transaction underlying the major chapter concept. After students understand the key concept, the authors added complexity in a building-block approach. Typically this single example runs throughout critical parts of the chapter to help students learn.

The authors focused text pedagogy to reinforce three key issues:

1. Guide students' learning by giving them pedagogy with which they are familiar from their financial accounting course.
2. Present material in a friendly way and tie material to the real world so students can see that accounting is relevant.
3. Use pedagogy to help students understand which concepts are important and which are peripheral. To this end, the Additional Considerations Box was developed.

Students responded well to this approach. For 2e, it was taken to another level with the addition of the Learning System. Print and electronic-based supplements were packaged with the text for FREE, thus putting all of the tools together for students: the text, the Coach CD, and the Alternate Exercises and Problems Manual, and access to the text website.

As the 3^rd edition is publishing, the Accounting World has changed significantly. As a result of all of the recent accounting scandals, a new breed of CPA is needed to move the profession forward. Intermediate Accounting, 3e has been revised with this in mind and is ready to teach the new breed.

Each chapter opens with a Financial Reporting Case that places the students in the role of the decision-maker. Earnings Quality and Earnings Management is incorporated early in the text (Chapter 4) and integrated throughout the text in Decision Makers' Perspective boxes. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 have been reorganized based on market feedback so that the balance sheet is covered before presenting the income measurement material. Cases based on Research, Analysis, Communication, and Judgment-those skills required by the New Uniform CPA Exam-have been added to the end of each chapter. The Learning System has been enhanced even further with the inclusion of NetTutor, a live, online tutoring service, and the text website has been enhanced via access to PowerWeb and New York Times news articles feeds.

With superior content and all of the tools your students need to help them study for the New Uniform CPA Exam, Spiceland/Sepe/Tomassini is your students' vehicle to success in Intermediate Accounting and beyond.