Monday, June 07, 2010
USI accounting team wins national competition
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Betty Vawter Senior Editor, News & Information Services 812/480-1873 This was the third consecutive year for a USI College of Business team to win the award and the fifth straight year for USI to qualify for the national finals. As a competitor in the final four the USI team made a presentation on June 6 at the 91st annual IMA Conference and Exposition in Baltimore, Maryland, and received an award of $3,000. As the national champion, the team received an additional $2,000. USI team members were accounting majors Kiersten M. Deig and Ashley M. Hancock of Evansville, Anna C. Shade of Henderson, Kentucky, and Shayne A. Wheeler of Tennyson, Indiana. Faculty sponsors were Dr. Brian McGuire, associate dean of the College of Business and professor of accounting, and Jeanette G. Maier-Lytle, instructor in accounting. Other teams in the finals represented Rider University, Wright State University, and Culver-Stockton College. Teams from universities throughout the country entered the first round of IMA competition. To qualify for the finals, each team prepared a 15-minute DVD presentation and submitted it for blind judging. Judges, selected from industry and academia across the country, chose the four finalists based on technical content and presentation skills exhibited in the video. The four teams made live presentations in the final round at the conference. A single common question from the judges followed each team presentation. The national Student Case Competition provides an opportunity for students to interpret, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate a solution to a management accounting problem. According to IMA, the competition presents students with real-life challenges and the opportunity to analyze a case, develop a solution, present it to an audience, and receive recognition. Irish pub case study The case for the 2010 competition, Keenans Pub,required the students to analyze the operation of a family-owned pub in Ireland and advise the owner on a future direction. The students prepared a report that provided: (1) an analysis of the current situation of the business using the available information (2) advice on what the owner should do in the future to achieve greater profitability (3) a logical, integrated range of critical success factors and related key performance indicators to assist management and employees to achieve the recommendations and (4) an outline of difficulties that might be encountered when applying the performance measures as well as suggestions regarding how to establish standards/targets for each of these performance measures and implement a reward/incentive system. One recommendation from the USI team was that the pub owner expand into an adjacent empty building, also owned by the family, with a nightclub business. Deig, Hancock, and Shade were competing for the second year in the competition. Two USI teams qualified for the finals in 2009. Shade said that having prior experience was a benefit. "What sets teams apart is the question-and-answer session," she said. "Three of us had been through that and knew what to expect." Prior to the competition the team practiced in professional settings with representatives of the accounting firms BKD, LLP Harding Shymanski & Company and Kemper CPA Group, LLP. The USI team was recognized at IMA's 2010 Academic and Student Awards Recognition Luncheon following the competition and will be honored again at the annual dinner on June 8. IMA, the world's leading organization dedicated to empowering management accounting and finance professionals to drive business performance, has approximately 65,000 members worldwide. |
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