MAcc Students Place Among Top Competition

PROVO, Utah – May 03, 2016 – A Brigham Young University School of Accountancy team recently took what they learned in class to cash in at the Deloitte National Audit Case Competition, winning $1,000 each and an additional $5,000 for the school in a second place finish.

“This team of students worked very well together to identify, research and solve the issues given to them,” says Cassy Budd, School of Accountancy teaching professor and team adviser. “They pulled it all together beautifully and exhibited poised confidence in their final presentation to the judges.”

Taken from Budd’s accounting research seminar, students were placed in teams at the school level before one group was chosen to present at the competition in Dallas. Andrew Bellomy from Centerville, Utah; Angel Bird from Panjim, India; Janelle Knight from Roosevelt, Utah; Logan Laxton from Charlotte, N.C.; and Chelsea Mickelsen from Idaho Falls, Idaho, were ultimately chosen to represent BYU.

From that point, however, the students had to overcome long distance challenges. Three members of the team were participating in internships leading up to the competition, forcing the group to work together mainly via Skype in spare moments in the evenings and on weekends. But the team made it work, putting together a solid answer to a case that involved the examination of a repurchase of treasury shares from employees and how they would figure in the statement of cash flows.

“The research class helped a ton,” Laxton says. “It taught us how to research and present in a way others can understand. That’s what we did for our presentation — we looked at it from a high level and explained why it was important to management.”

Their recommendations came in just behind Louisiana State University’s entry but ahead of Florida A&M University, Miami University, University of Missouri and University of Notre Dame.

“I felt like every team did well, so I had no clue we were going to take second place,” says Laxton. “I was ecstatic we finished so high.”

The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, entrepreneurship, finance, information systems and public management. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,300 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.