Monday, May 01, 2006
USI accounting team qualifies for national competition
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A team of USI accounting students is among four teams from universities throughout the country that have qualified to compete in the national finals of the Video Case Competition sponsored by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). Thirteen university teams entered the competition. The four finalists will make their presentations live June 20 before judges at the IMA Annual Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas. Judges will be selected from industry and academia across the country. The winning team will be announced the following evening at IMA’s Annual Dinner. To qualify, teams prepared a 15-minute video presentation and submitted it for blind judging. The case for the 2006 competition is entitled “Creating a Lean Enterprise: The Case of the Lebanon Gasket Company.” The student teams were asked to respond to a series of questions related to “lean accounting,” addressing issues such as capacity planning, aligning employee incentives with lean goals, and making product mix decisions. Videotaped presentations were judged on the basis of technical content and presentation skills. While IMA officials have notified the four individual teams selected for the final round of competition, they have not made a general announcement of the four finalists. Teams will learn what universities competing teams represent when they arrive at the national IMA meeting. Each of the four teams in the finals has received an award of $3,000 from IMA. The winning team in the live competition will receive an additional $2,000. USI College of Business accounting teams won the case study competition sponsored by the Indiana CPA Society in fall 2004 and fall 2005. The team that will compete nationally includes members from both award-winning teams. This was USI’s first year to enter the national competition. Members of USI’s IMA Video Case Competition team are May Flores and Donovan Sexton from Newburgh, Indiana, and Kevin Farley of Huntingburg, Indiana. All are seniors majoring in accounting. Flores and Farley were members of the 2005 accounting team. Sexton was on the 2004 team. Faculty advisors are Jeanette Maier-Lytle, instructor of accounting, and Dr. Brian L. McGuire, chair of the USI Department of Accounting and Business Law. Maier-Lytle advised the accounting teams in state competition the last two years. Both Maier-Lytle and McGuire are members of IMA. The students researched the case for four weeks early in spring semester in preparation for making the video. Maier-Lytle said the USI accounting students did an excellent job of researching the topics in the case. She also said their experience in the Speaking Eagles Toastmasters organization has helped to sharpen their speaking skills and increase their confidence in making presentations. She and McGuire thanked USI’s Dana Willett, media production manager for Instructional Technology Services, for assisting the students in producing a high-quality video for the competition. At the finals, the team’s 15-minute live presentation will be followed by a single question from the judges. Team members will have five minutes to confer before presenting their answer. Team member May Flores said, “In the state competition, the judges were giving us question after question following our presentation. We will try to succeed at this, too.” The Video Case Competition is sponsored annually by IMA to promote sound financial/accounting analysis and presentation skills. IMA is an organization for management accounting and finance professionals. It has about 70,000 members worldwide. |
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