Three business students travel to Toronto for accounting competition
Amy Szybalski
News Writer
On Saturday, January 9th, three students from Lakehead University, Michelle Labate, Megan Upton, and Michael-Benoit Kuziora, travelled to Toronto to participate in a provincial accounting competition.
Lakehead students placed a respectable tenth out of thirty-five teams competing from nineteen Ontario universities.
CA$H is hosted annually by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario. According to Mona Ghaimi, the institute’s director of career information, the point is to “give a chance for students to learn about the skills they’ll need to succeed in the work of business, while competing for prizes that can help fund their education.”
“It’s a fun event that gives participants a chance to network with peers from across the province and make connections with representatives from the chartered accountant training offices,” added Ghiami.
The first place team, from University of Toronto-Mississauga, won $3000, as well as and additional $1,500 for their school’s accounting program. The second place team, University of Toronto-St George, and third place team, University of Toronto-Scarborough, won $1,500 and $750 respectively.
During the challenge, the teams participated in friendly competition that stressed different chartered accounting skills such as teamwork, leadership, organization and time management. The teams also participated in simulations designed by Eagles Flight that assessed the participants’ abilities to think under pressure.
Students were chosen by Lakehead University Accounting Club to attend the competition. Potential participants applied for a position on the team and LUAC members voted on the final team.
“We learned a lot about teamwork, social networking, economic stability, and that the only way to complete any goal in life is to work hard no matter what gets in your way,” said LU CA$H team member Michelle Labate when asked what she learned from the competition.
Labate went on to comment that she “would love to participate in the competition again, it was overall a great experience. I met a lot of very nice people, and after completing the competition, I now know where we went wrong and what we could have done to better prepare ourselves.”