A group of Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) accounting students has become the first team from British Columbia to win a leading undergraduate accounting conference.
ACHIEVE 2019 brings together accounting students from across Canada to present business cases to various Chartered Professional Accounting (CPA) firms.
“This was a particularly dedicated and self-motivated group of students, they really were a pleasure to work with,” says KPU accounting instructor, Sam Newton.
The four students from KPU who took part in the competition in Toronto were Henry Flowers, Dilsharn Kaur Mokha, Taran Takhar and Sam Garzitto.
Participation in the competition is by invitation only. KPU was invited last year, but did not win.
“I had a strong determination that this year we would prepare to do better than all other teams and our team would bring the trophy home,” says Mokha. “We started researching about the theme of the competition from the day we received the invite. Henry and I started planning the approach and how to better implement the feedback we had received last year.”
All teams are given a business case which they must research, evaluate and present within a couple hours. In reality, real-life business cases take much longer to present.
“A complete rush of joy. It was a reward not just for us but for all involved in the process,” says Flowers. “We had abundant support from faculty, firm representatives, case team alumni, and, of course, our coach Sam Newton.”
“We're glad that we could make KPU proud and we hope that we can keep the winning streak going with future KPU case teams.”
Both Flowers and Mokha say the hands-on approach at KPU helped them not only with their education but also application in the real world.
“KPU instructors not only provide theory knowledge of accounting, but they also focus on the application of concepts through case studies in class,” says Mokha.
“I was just talking to a partner at a local accounting firm that hires a lot of KPU students. He said that if you lined up all the accounting new hires in BC it would be obvious which ones were from KPU,” says Newton. “He said our emphasis on case writing and case analysis really differentiates KPU students from others in the province.”
For more information about the accounting program, visit kpu.ca/business/accounting