The CCB Waves, a team of four Pepperdine seniors — Andrew Murray, Meghann Smith, Katharine Wright and Taylor Smith — placed among the top 10 teams in the 2011 American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Accounting Competition.
“All three Pepperdine groups that entered the competition had excellent ideas, and I am so proud that one of our groups has been selected in the top 10. All of our accounting students are very hardworking and dedicated,” Professor Carolyn Galantine said. “Dr. Marilyn Misch does an exceptional job as the director of the accounting major.”
Pepperdine is in the running against nine other undergraduate programs, including the University of Missouri, North Carolina State University, Saint Anselm College, Belmont University and the University of Texas at Dallas.
“Each one of the four students in the semi-finals is very knowledgeable, and I am hopeful that they will be in the final three,” Galantine said.
The competition is comprised of three rounds structured to emulate the stages of a business proposal which includes: 1) the 214 participating teams were asked to write a 750-word summary outlining certain fraud risks relating to a fictional case study involving business expansion into foreign countries 2) then, the competition was narrowed down to 10 teams, who were given the task of producing an additional, longer memo and video response elaborating on their original proposal 3) finally, the top three teams will be flown to Washington, D.C., to present their ideas to the AICPA board of directors.
Responses are judged on content, clarity and creativity. The first-place winners receive a $10,000 prize. While students competing in 2010 were faced with the challenge of proposing sustainability to real clients, while this year’s focus is on fraud and forensic skills in theoretical major overseas expansions.
Each team is allowed four members, and an optional faculty adviser. The four students were introduced to the competition in Galantine’s auditing course, which requires students to analyze a case study and produce both a paper and video for 10 percent of their final grade. The day before the semester started, Galantine received an email notifying her of AICPA’s annual competition. Three teams of four students from Galantine’s class chose to enter the competition.
The team, led by Murray, chose one another after having worked together in previous accounting classes. Three members of the team had completed audit internships this past summer. All four of the students are under contract for accounting jobs post graduation.
“We were all interested in taking on a challenge and thought this case would test our abilities and allow us to benchmark ourselves against other students,” wrote the team in an email. “In order to prepare, we conducted a lot of research into various regulatory issues such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the U.K. Bribery Act. Once we got a better understanding of the relevant issues, we met multiple times to prepare.”
The competition requires students to write a 1500-word memo expanding on the issues covered in the original paper and prepare a video that supports the assertions made within the additional memo. The team plans to make use of social media to obtain votes.
The team’s video will be available on www.ThisWayToCPA.com from Nov. 14 through 21 for public voting.
