MAccing An Impact

Welcome back, future accounting superstars! The second day of MAcc orientation was just as fun as the first, but much more impactful (pun intended).

The Sanger Leadership Center Impact Challenge is an all-day event that builds leadership skills through a philanthropic project benefiting Detroit. We met with students and teachers from Cornerstone Schools, a K-12 school focused on making students college-ready.

Reggie giving us feedback. Such a well-spoken middle schooler!

Our task was to create a year-long plan and a one day event to encourage students to explore different business careers, engage in professional development, and make a college readiness program. The MAcc program was broken into two groups, one half targeting high school students and the other half focusing on middle schoolers.

My group was tasked with convincing middle schoolers to think about these adult concepts, which we embraced as a challenge. We developed a curriculum where we’d teach a different career skill every month, with topics such as professional dress, elevator pitches, and conflict resolution.

Accountants being creative!

Our one day event involved activities such as college preparation jeopardy, MLB (Money Literacy Baseball), and a simulation game where students picked different education levels to see what type of lifestyle - houses, cars, clothing - they could afford. This game would emphasize the positive impact of a college degree on lifetime earnings.

All groups made posters demonstrating their plans and presented them to a panel of judges which included Ross MAcc faculty, Sanger Leadership Center faculty, and teachers and students from Cornerstone Schools. We MAcc students also voted for our favorite groups.

One winning team was crowned from the high school and middle school categories. My group actually won the middle school competition! The MAcc Student Association’s Philanthropy subcommittee will take these ideas and implement them over the year by visiting the school regularly. I joined this committee and am excited to help put our ideas into action to help create a brighter future for the kids at Cornerstone Schools.

GO BLUE!

Welcome! MAcc Orientation Day 1

Hello, future accounting superstars! My name is Jon and I’m a Master of Accounting (MAcc) student at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. I am so excited to be here that I am starting a blog to provide you with an insider look at what it’s like to be a Ross MAcc student. I will also do my best to preemptively answer any questions you have about applying to our wonderful MAcc program.

My graduate school experience started at the end of August with an action-packed, two day orientation. After meeting our program’s great leadership team, we heard from Alex, a 2015 MAcc alumnus who won the Elijah Watt Sells Award. This honor is bestowed upon very few CPAs, and requires one to score an average of 95.5 on all four parts of the CPA exam on the first try.

After Alex gave us advice on acing the CPA exam, we broke into groups for a team-building exercise with the Sanger Leadership Center. Our class bonded as we traded cards that reflected personality traits and then we stood in four corners of the room with the people most alike ourselves. The big takeaway was learning how to work best with people who have different leadership qualities, and this lesson was going to be very important for the Impact Challenge (more details in an upcoming post!).

Getting out of our chairs to learn about our leadership styles

was interesting and informative, with a video chat panel of recent graduates sharing advice for how to maximize our one year in the MAcc program. These alumni were working at Big Four firms in Detroit, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco - a testament to how strong the MAcc program is with regards to career placement.

We then walked over to the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology where a real life Indiana Jones taught us about accounting’s ancient origins. The first form of writing was used to keep track of inventory in ancient warehouses more than 5,000 years ago and double entry accounting started in 14th century Italy! We had the chance to hold artifacts and discuss whether it was ethical for a museum to display artifacts that had an uncertain provenance, or origin. This led to a broader discussion of ethics, which is one of the most important aspects of being a CPA.

Archaeology meets accounting for an ethics discussion

We got to pick an artifact that symbolized a trait we wanted to embody as a leader. I selected a fresco that was buried in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in Pompeii. When the painting was discovered over a thousand years later, it still remained a beautiful piece of artwork. I want to be a leader who can remain calm in crisis situations and emerge as a stronger person, which is why I chose this artifact.

The day ended with a happy hour. It was fun getting to know our classmates in a more casual setting and we elected the leaders of our MAcc Student Association (MSA). The day felt like a whirlwind, but it was nothing compared to what we faced during Day 2.

GO BLUE!