Alina Rosenkranz |
UP’s KPMG Accounting team may have looked like underdogs competing against teams from large universities like University of Washington, University of Illinois and Colorado State.
But seniors Erika Schlotfeldt and Jessie Robinson and juniors Emily Glaser and Courtney Lemon proved them wrong, winning the regional competition in Chicago to advance to the U.S. finals in New York next month. In New York, the team will compete against four other schools in the KPMG Accounting Competition.
“All the other teams looked pretty shocked,” Robinson, an accounting major, said. “They were probably like, ‘Who is University of Portland?’”
In the competition, teams are given a problem and within three hours – without access to the Internet– they prepared a presentation on their suggested solution.
In Chicago, the students were given around 10 pages of information about the Olympics in London from 2012. To win, they planned to follow a few organizational steps: time management, ideas, structuring those ideas, and if they got the time, practicing the presentation.
Accounting professor Ellen Lippman said the students’ success comes from their hard work in accounting classes.
“It’s all them,” Lippman said. “The only thing we had to do with it is that we provided a curriculum here for the last several years. And so hopefully they were able to draw on what they learned here.”
According to Schlotfeldt, an accounting and finance major, the judges especially liked their practical solutions, in comparison to competing teams. For example, their presentation emphasized getting people to Olympic events they would care most about.
Schlotfeldt pointed out that their team was all women in a competition often dominated by men.
“We go girl power!” Robinson said.
To prepare for the national finals, they will study the judges’ detailed feedback, have training sessions and talk to consultants.
If the team can continue their winning streak in New York on Feb. 26-27, they will advance to an international competition in Dubai in April.
“This competition is interesting in the way that only the big schools are usually invited to compete,” Schlotfeldt said. “We are talking about USC, Notre Dame, University of Chicago.”
Alina Rosenkranz is a reporter for The Beacon. You can reach her at rosenkra17@up.edu.
