Accounting Team Top 20 in National Competition

Nanook Accountants placed in the top 20 in a national accounting competition. Team members are faculty advisor Ruth Prato, student Danelle Small, team captain Lyssa Kemper, Mindy Haugeberg, Adam Morotti, and faculty advisor Amy Cooper.
Nanook Accountants placed in the top 20 in a national accounting competition. Team members are faculty advisor Ruth Prato, student Danelle Small, team captain Lyssa Kemper, Mindy Haugeberg, Adam Morotti, and faculty advisor Amy Cooper.

UPDATE: Go vote for the UAF Nanook Accountants team!

UAF School of Management accounting students participated in a national competition for the first time – beating teams from across the nation to place in the top 20 and compete for their spot in the top 3.

The 2012 AICPA Accounting Competition presents a different topic each year. Students form teams and argue for their solution in an 1000-words-or-less paper. The 2010 and 2011 topics were sustainability and fraud & forensics.

This election year, the scenario is:

You’ve joined a team running an election campaign for the next President of the United States of America.  Your organization has seen its clients struggling with the financial issues faced by many Americans and you believe that your years of experience in management accounting gives you the big picture perspective needed to provide practical solutions to these issues.

Like in every election, your team must develop your candidate’s proposed solutions to address current issues as part of the candidate selection process. For the purposes of this debate, you will briefly outline your proposals for 2 of the 3 main issues: social security, income taxes, and the deficit.

The SOM team Nanook Accountants sent in their proposed solutions to the deficit and income taxes and were advanced to the top 20. At the next level of competition students created a video expanding on one of the issues they choose in the beginning; Nanook Accountants choose their deficit solution. Their solutions include “Compliance Auditing” for government entitlement programs, as well as financial literacy in education curriculums to allow American youth to better understand national issues and to obtain financial skills to secure their own financial future.

Public voting starts Thursday, November 8. A panel of judges will rank the videos, taking into account public opinion, and announce the top 3 on Friday, November 16. The top 3 will be flown to Washington, D.C. where they’ll have 10 minutes to wow the judges. Third place receives $2,500; second place, $5,000; and first place will take home $10,000.

“We’re really proud of them – it’s been amazing. The competition has been a huge undertaking and they’ve exceeded my expectations every step of the way.” – Amy Cooper

“This competition is a great resume builder, not to mention the experience of competing in a national competition. Here, they’re competing against their buddies in the classroom, but now it’s students from all over the country.” – Ruth Prato