McFerrin “Mac” Falck

MAC Class of 2004

Choosing the MAC Program

McFerrin "Mac" Falck (MAC '04) saw accounting as a great door to get to where he wanted to go.

When Falck approached that door in 2003, he knew that his undergraduate chemistry degree and a stint in the Army were unlikely to impress any potential employer. So he checked out the UNC Kenan-Flagler Masters of Accounting (MAC) program and learned that it took only one year to get a master’s in accounting. He knew that would be very intensive, but he also knew that once he was done he was guaranteed a job in any medium to large city in the United States.

But while Falck wanted to learn the basics of accounting, he also wanted to learn about the deeper concepts that could serve for the rest of his career.

"A lot of accounting programs just try to teach the nuts and bolts or a curriculum will try to prepare you for the CPA exam. The MAC program focuses on developing your core conceptual strengths of accounting and business in general,” he said. “A third of the classes in the MAC program are related to accounting but are not accounting courses."

Recently, Falck has put his advanced degree to work as a cost analyst for Cree, which manufactures LED screens in Research Triangle Park. Before moving back to the Triangle he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Atlanta. In between graduation from the MAC program and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Falck was recalled to active duty and spent a year as a battle captain stationed in Baghdad.

"What I do is track and assign the different costs that are being capitalized in the inventories. When Ford builds a car, at various stages of car production, value is added to the car. There’s a final value on it when they roll it off the assembly line and sell it. There’s a particular process in the accounting world that assigns value. It can be simple, and it can be complicated. In Cree’s case it’s very complicated. It comes down to working with the operations folks, telling them what’s costing them what and where they’re losing money."

What UNC Kenan-Flagler helped him achieve

Falck wasn't sure what he wanted to do after college. As an undergraduate, he deferred thinking about a long-term career because he knew he was going into the military for three years – he attended UNC on an ROTC scholarship and entered the Army as an officer after graduation. He never considered the Army as a career. He saw the MAC program as a transition tool to help him go from the military to a business career.

When Falck crunched the numbers of all the programs that were available, Kenan-Flagler's MAC program made the most sense to him. He saw the MAC program as a way to transition from another career in a very short time. He liked the focus on analytical, communication, leadership and organizational skills. And he especially liked that it made him highly marketable in the business world.

The program doesn't turn out accountants so much as it turns out business graduates who look at the broad picture of business.

"It is a very high-tempo, highly competitive crash course in accounting that also introduces you to a lot of the other business categories outside of accounting but that are related to accounting," Falck said. "You focus on analytical, communication, leadership and organizational skills, things that most people don’t think of when the stereotypical accountant comes to mind. I like to think of having the accounting degree and the CPA as having another set of tools in the tool kit."

Or having other doors to walk through.

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