For accounting students, college is demanding enough. Exams, projects and technical coursework require precision and discipline. But beyond the classroom, another pressure point looms: the recruiting process.

Job fairs, networking events, application deadlines—and, for those fortunate enough to advance, interviews—all unfold while students are still learning debits and credits.

The competition is real, and the stakes are high.

For community college transfer students, that pressure often intensifies. Just as they are adjusting to a new university environment, building relationships on a larger campus and proving themselves academically, they are also stepping into the most consequential phase of their early careers.

Understanding this environment, accounting instructors at the community college level are adjusting their approach and adapting to evolving employment markets to prepare students for transfer and the increasingly complex demands of the profession itself.

More Than a Job

For 36 years, Debra Johnson has walked into classrooms at Cerritos College with the same conviction: teaching isn’t just a job—it’s a calling.

Cerritos College runs three generations deep in her family. Johnson’s mother taught there. And years later, her daughter would as well.

“I know how much good teachers meant to me,” she said. “I know how helpful they were when I was a student. It’s something I want to pay forward.”

Over nearly four decades, she has taught and mentored thousands of students, many of them first-generation college students who transferred to four-year universities and became the first in their families to earn bachelor’s degrees.

Her impact extends beyond the classroom. Johnson, a CalCPA member and an active supporter of CalCPA’s Pathways to Success program, helps students develop the professional and interpersonal skills needed to thrive at top CPA firms.

One of those students was Thamir Kazwini.

“I laughed in her face,” Kazwini recalled, remembering the day Johnson suggested he consider transferring to USC. “At the time, I thought there was no way I could afford a school like USC.”

Johnson saw something different.

“Thamir has a heart that is unmatched by most I’ve encountered,” she said. “I’ve rarely seen a student his age display that level of thoughtfulness and care for everyone around him. That’s what impressed me most.”

With scholarship support, encouragement from Cerritos College accounting faculty members like Johnson, and guidance from CalCPA’s Pathway to Success program, Kazwini transferred to USC and graduated in December 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Today, he works as an assurance associate at EY in Los Angeles after he completed an internship with the firm.

He still credits Johnson for helping change the trajectory of his life.

“Quite frankly, I would not be where I am today if it had not been for Professor Debra Johnson.”

I Did it My Way

Since August 2014, CalCPA member Bennet P. Tchaikovsky has been teaching accounting at Irvine Valley College (IVC)—and he has done it his own way.

Tchaikovsky, co-department chair of accounting at IVC, doesn’t assign a traditional textbook. Instead, over time, he has built and continually updated an extensive catalog of accounting lectures on YouTube, freely available to students and the public. Each year, he refines and expands the content, ensuring it reflects current practice and real-world application.

Former student Ves Vafadari (IVC, Class of 2016), now an audit senior manager at Baker Tilly in Irvine, still remembers his first class with Tchaikovsky.

“I liked Bennet right away,” Vafadari said. “He was a big reason I got hooked on accounting. His presentations were interesting, his work experience was impressive, and he was incredibly engaging and personable.”

Vafadari went on to transfer to UC Irvine, earning a degree in economics and accounting before beginning his career with Baker Tilly in 2018.

But what stood out most, he said, was Tchaikovsky’s connection to the profession.

“One of the things I was most impressed by was Bennet’s network of industry professionals,” Vafadari recalled. “He helped me secure an internship with a local Irvine startup, and that experience really launched my career in public accounting.”

Beyond the classroom and beyond YouTube, Tchaikovsky has worked to build structured pathways for aspiring CPAs.

He created the IVC 30 to CPA program, designed for students who already hold a bachelor’s degree and need additional coursework to qualify for the CPA Exam. He has also supported the Guaranteed Accounting Program 4+1 (GAP 4+1), a partnership between IVC and Cal State Fullerton that allows students to earn both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in accounting or taxation in just five years.

At the core of his teaching philosophy is a simple idea: make accounting real.

“I show students actual public filings from Fortune 500 companies submitted to the SEC,” Tchaikovsky said. “I try to use real-life examples to teach accounting and business that students recognize.”

His advice to practitioners considering a move into the classroom is equally direct.

“You have to get out of the textbook and focus on the real-life examples you work through every day,” he said. “Trust that students will find that far more interesting—and far more useful—than anything that comes straight from a book.”

More than a decade into his time at IVC, Tchaikovsky’s commitment continues to shape students’ careers and strengthen the profession’s pipeline.

The Simplest Ideas

At Pasadena City College, accounting instructor Michelle Lee found inspiration for one of her most effective teaching tools in an unexpected place: Facebook’s corporate headquarters in Menlo Park.

By 2017, Lee was already 15 years into her teaching career at PCC when a Facebook campus tour sparked an idea.

“Whiteboards. Seriously, that simple,” Lee said with a laugh.

Walking the floor of Facebook’s headquarters, she noticed rows of rolling whiteboards covered in notes and code. “There were so many of them,” she recalled. “I came back to PCC, found some old whiteboards in storage, put them up in my classroom, and had students work through problems together. They loved it.”

The impact was immediate.

Haley Chung, now a first-year audit associate at EisnerAmper and a UCLA graduate, remembers the collaborative energy in Lee’s class. “I loved the group work,” Chung said. “She always encouraged collaboration and engagement. Doing problems on the whiteboards with classmates was one of my favorite parts of the course.”

Chung had originally entered college intending to study biology. A friend encouraged her to try Lee’s accounting class instead. “I instantly loved it,” she said. “Professor Lee was welcoming and encouraging. She cared about me as an individual—not just the grade I earned.”

Lee’s emphasis on collaboration extends beyond the classroom. Starting in 2015, Lee started a professional speakers lunchtime series, leading campus tours to CSUN and USC and a partnership with EY. By 2022, those events were organized and managed by the student-run club, Lancer Business Organization (LBO). The club, mentored by fellow PCC accounting instructor, Gregg Lee, gives students valuable leadership experience, while strengthening connections with numerous business professionals.

“We realized that if students ran the club, they could scale it far beyond what we could do ourselves,” Lee said. LBO has since hosted CPA firms including EY, PwC and EsinerAmper, giving students direct exposure to recruiters while developing organizational and communication skills along the way.

As CPAs, we benefit directly from the work of these and other accounting educators throughout California’s 116 community colleges that sustains and strengthens our profession. California’s community colleges are some of the profession’s primary gateways. They are where confidence is built, talent is identified and career paths begin to take shape. The instructors are adapting their methods, modernizing curriculum and responding in real time to the evolving demands of accounting to ensure the next generation of CPAs is prepared and inspired.