| EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
|  WITH FALLING ENROLLMENT IN
ACCOUNTING PROGRAMS, practitioners
can make an important contribution by helping
students understand the challenges and rewards
of practicing accounting. Participating in a
mentoring program at a college or university is
one way to make contact with future graduates
and influence their career decisions.
JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY
DEVELOPED A MENTORING program using
the school’s alumni accounting graduates. This
flexible program gave students the opportunity
to interact with CPAs by e-mail, phone or in
person at lunch or on office visits. The
mentors helped give students a more realistic
picture of accounting career opportunities and
the job responsibilities they would face.
THE JOHN CARROLL PROGRAM
DRAWS MENTORS from both public
accounting and industry. Alumni provide the
faculty coordinator a list of colleagues at
their place of business who are willing to
serve as mentors. These volunteers then are
matched with a student of the same gender.
SURVEY RESULTS SHOW THE
MENTOR PROGRAM helps solidify the
choice of accounting as a major for a number
of students. Even those who decide not to
major in accounting find the relationship
fulfilling as a way to better understand how
business works.
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
THAT DON’T ALREADY have a mentoring
program can easily set one up. In addition to
teaching students things about accounting they
could never learn through lectures and
textbooks, the program helps keep the school
in touch with alumni. | | GERALD P. WEINSTEIN is associate
professor of accountancy and department chairman
at John Carroll University in University
Heights, Ohio. His e-mail address is
weinstein@jcu.edu . KAREN SCHUELE is
associate professor of accountancy at John
Carroll University. Her e-mail address is kschuele@jcu.edu
. |
 nrollment in accounting programs is
falling. The percentage of college students majoring
in accounting dropped to 2% in 2000 from 4% in 1990.
Several recent studies report that high school and
college students generally view accountants’ work as
boring and monotonous. They envision creative,
rewarding, people-oriented careers for themselves and
rank accounting low on all these characteristics. In
their 2000 report Accounting Education: Charting
the Course through a Perilous Future, W. Steve
Albrecht and Robert J. Sack identified students’ lack
of knowledge and misperceptions about accounting
careers as one of the challenges facing educators in
attracting students to the profession.
| While academics
may be best suited to training students in the
skills they need to be accountants, practicing
CPAs can make an important contribution as
well. They are in the unique position of being
able to describe what one observer called the
“nature, variety, challenge and rewards of
practicing accounting.” One way to do this is
through mentoring programs. This article
describes such a program the authors helped
develop at the Boler Business School at John
Carroll University in Cleveland where CPA
practitioners served in this important
advisory role. Educators will learn how to set
up a program at their school and practitioners
can get a better understanding of why they
should participate if asked. | | A
Decline in Quality
In a survey of accounting
faculty, 80.1% said fewer
qualified students were majoring
in accounting than five years ago;
45.7% of practitioners agreed.
Source:
Accounting Education: Charting
the Course through a Perilous
Future,
www.aaahq.org/pubs/AESv16/Chapter3.pdf
. | |
ACCOUNTING FIRSTHAND
Any
school, regardless of size, can develop a mentoring
program that provides interested students the
opportunity to learn about the accounting profession
firsthand from practitioners. At John Carroll we offer
a mentor to students enrolled in the introductory
accounting course. Most schools require students
considering a major in any area of business to
complete a two-semester introductory course in
accounting before making a final decision. We believe
that a student armed with a realistic picture of
career opportunities and job responsibilities might be
more inclined to major in accounting. Unlike a
formal internship, our mentoring program is designed
to be flexible. The form and frequency of contact
between mentors and students varies but generally is
guided by the student’s wishes. With some mentor
relationships, contact is exclusively an exchange of
e-mails or conversations by phone. For others, the
student and mentor meet for lunch and an office visit.
Some mentoring relationships continue into the next
academic year while others end because the student is
no longer interested in accounting or has gathered all
the information he or she needs to decide on a major.
John Carroll students who have had more than one
contact with their mentor have expressed only positive
opinions about their experiences. For those thinking
of majoring in accounting, a chance to speak with a
practitioner helped reinforce their decision.
IDENTIFYING INTERESTED STUDENTS
At John Carroll we make students enrolled in the
introductory accounting course aware of the mentoring
program in two ways. First, we include a statement in
the syllabus (see “Attracting Students to the
Mentorship Program”). Second, during a class meeting
early in the term, the instructor explains the
program, emphasizing these points:
 Participation is
voluntary.
The degree of
contact between the student and his or her
mentor is flexible.
The program is not a
recruiting tool.
The student is not
obligated to accept invitations for
face-to-face meetings but should respond in
a timely fashion to any invitations.
The instructor distributes a sign-up
sheet soliciting the names, phone numbers
and e-mail addresses of students interested
in participating. The timing for
signing up students is important to the
program’s success. In 1999, the first year
we had a mentoring program at John Carroll,
we made the mistake of soliciting student
names during the first week of class, which
we discovered was much too early. As a
result, a number of students who initially
had considered accounting as a potential
major (and therefore signed up for the
program) had a change of heart and chose not
to pursue the mentoring relationship. This
led to frustration on the part of some
mentors who made valiant attempts to have
meaningful discussions with students who
were no longer interested. |
Start Here…To Learn More
For more information on how to
help aspiring CPAs learn more about
the accounting profession and the
career opportunities available, go
to the AICPA Web site,
www.startheregoplaces.com .
| |
In the second year we delayed
soliciting student names until the semester was half
over. While this minimized the number of students who
later opted out of the program, it also had a pitfall:
Initiating the program later in the semester resulted
in many of the mentoring interactions coming during
the traditional public accounting busy season, a
problem for some volunteers. As a compromise,
gathering the names of interested students about one
month into the term seems to work well.
Discounting our first-year mistakes, roughly 40
students per year ask for mentors. (We accept about 50
accounting majors each year.) The students who chose
not to participate in the program cited various
reasons including no time or no interest in
accounting. Several students declined the opportunity
because they were certain they wanted to major in
accounting and felt they did not need a mentor.
IDENTIFYING MENTORS
Our program
draws mentors from both public accounting and
industry. We gather names of accounting professionals
interested in serving as mentors by contacting several
alumni accounting majors who are employed at public
accounting firms and at local companies (international
as well as regional and local firms). These alumni
provide the faculty member coordinating the program
with a list of colleagues at their place of business
who are willing to serve as mentors. We match
each student with a mentor of the same gender, and
most mentors are assigned one student. Each mentor and
student is notified of the name, phone number and
e-mail address of his or her partner and we inform
both that the mentor will initiate contact. Since
gender is our only criteria for matching mentors, the
resulting partnership is completely random. To make
sure every student gets a mentor, we do sometimes have
to assign a mentor more than one student.
| At John Carroll
we have made a conscious decision not to
micromanage the program. When soliciting
mentors we ask only for a willingness to be
available to speak with accounting students.
We have been fortunate in being able to
attract a diverse pool of volunteers, most of
whom are loyal alumni. We decided an
orientation session would be too difficult to
schedule and didn’t want to turn a potential
mentor away because of his or her inability to
attend. Instead, the program’s faculty liaison
sends each mentor a brief letter or e-mail
encouraging him or her to contact the assigned
student but leaving the details open. We tell
mentors we expect nothing more than a phone
call and leave the rest up to the two
individuals. .During the program’s
inaugural year in 1999, one person at each
participating firm served as the contact
between the mentors and the faculty member
coordinating the program. We sent student
assignments to the contact person, who
relayed them to the mentors. A survey at the
conclusion of that year showed a number of
mentors had not contacted assigned students
and some mentors said they were not made
aware of their assignment. To mitigate this
problem, we now use a firm contact only to
obtain names of individuals willing to serve
as mentors. We communicate directly with
each of the roughly 40 mentors rather than
through the firm contact person. This
significantly reduces the number of students
whose mentors do not contact them.
PROGRAM
RESULTS
At the conclusion of each program
year, we ask students and mentors to
complete a survey to provide us with
feedback. The results help us iron out
problems such as the one cited above. They
also enable us to better manage student
expectations based on the interaction
students have with their mentors. (See “ The Students Speak ”
at right for some feedback on the John
Carroll program.) We also use the
survey to help us evaluate the program’s
success in attracting additional students to
the accounting major. While the results do
not indicate great successes in changing
students’ minds on their choice of major,
they do show the program helps solidify the
choice of accounting as a major for a number
of students. (See “
The Mentoring Program: One Participant’s
Point of View ,” below, for one former
student’s perspective on how the program had
an impact on his career decision.) In
addition, many participants report that
while they did not decide to major in
accounting, the mentoring relationship
nonetheless was very fulfilling. It provides
them with a better understanding of the
accounting profession and the workings of
business in general. |
The
Students
Speak
Here
are some brief comments from John
Carroll students who have
participated in the school’s
accounting mentorship program.
“It was useful to be
able to connect with someone in
the profession as a sophomore at a
time when I really knew nothing of
accounting. We went to a local
restaurant for dinner and my
mentor brought along some other
John Carroll people who work for
his firm. They answered a lot of
my questions.” “My
mentor didn’t try to recruit me
for her firm. While she talked
about how her firm did things, she
never ‘pushed’ it on me. I felt
she was giving me good information
about careers in accounting. She
and I still are in occasional
contact.” “I
enrolled in the program because I
was curious to know more about
accounting and really didn’t have
a clue. Talking with my mentor
gave me a chance to learn from
someone other than our professors.
Practitioners have a much
different outlook on things.”
“My
mentor and I went to lunch a
couple of times and I visited his
office, where I met some other
John Carroll graduates who work
for the firm. He also put me in
touch with the firm’s recruiter
and I spent an entire day at the
office. That gave me a chance to
see what public accounting work is
really like.” “I
got involved in the program
because I wanted feedback about
the profession from someone who
was actually in it. One piece of
advice I got is that working is
actually easier than going to
school at John Carroll.”
“My
mentor never made contact with me.
While I was disappointed, it
hasn’t changed my interest in
accounting.” | |
SETTING UP A PROGRAM
Here are
some ideas on how both accounting practitioners and
schools can put together a mentoring program.
If you are a practitioner
Contact the accounting department
chairperson (or other contact person) at your alma
mater and see whether he or she is interested in
creating a mentoring arrangement. If you are located
near a college with an accounting department (even if
it’s not your alma mater) call the department head and
gauge his or her interest.
Commit at least an hour of your time to
the program. Any quality mentoring relationship
requires that the parties attain a certain comfort
level; you can’t reach this level with just a single
phone call or e-mail.
Meet the student for coffee or perhaps
lunch. It’s seldom that any time-consuming
communication is required after the first encounter.
Be honest with the student. Accounting
can offer a rewarding career, but it also has its
challenges. Not all students will want to, nor should
they, become accountants. As a CPA it’s likely you
will be able to offer opinions on other business areas
they may have an interest in.
If you are a college or a university
Consider the size of your accounting
program and the likely availability of mentors. It may
be necessary to restrict the number of participants.
Assign a faculty member to serve as
administrator and liaison between students and
mentors. This individual would notify mentors of their
student assignments and respond to any question either
the students or mentors have about the program.
Use alumni contacts to build your network
of mentors. Alumni serving as mentors adds another
level on which the mentor and student can interact
because they share the experience of attending the
same college or university. However, do not discourage
nonalumni from participating.
Implement the program in the first term
of the introductory accounting course.
| Encourage students to be polite
in their dealings with mentors. Tell them it
is acceptable to decline invitations (and even
to decline to continue the relationship) but
to advise the mentors of their intentions.
Survey both the student and
mentor participants at the conclusion of the
academic year to gauge the effectiveness of
the program and identify any necessary
changes that need to be made for the next
academic year.
BENEFITS OF THE PROGRAM
The mentoring arrangement we
describe can offer benefits to all parties.
For a college or university, it helps keep
the faculty in touch with alumni and the
alumni in contact with the school. Schools
need to maintain relations with
professionals for several reasons, not only
to help it stay abreast of current issues
facing practitioners but also for
accreditation purposes. An important benefit
is that the program may help increase or at
least stabilize accounting enrollment by
giving students a better understanding of
what it means to be a CPA. |
|
Attracting Students to the
Mentorship Program
John Carroll inserts this
statement in the first semester
“Introduction to Accounting”
course syllabus.
Students
who are considering a career in
accounting or are unsure about
their major may wish to take
advantage of a mentoring program.
The objective of this program is
to allow students to achieve an
understanding of the accounting
profession by interacting with a
graduate of this university who is
currently employed in accounting
at a CPA firm or industry in the
local area. This is not a
recruiting program. Each student
will be contacted by a mentor to
discuss career opportunities and
options. There is no obligation on
your part other than to be
courteous and to respond to
invitations. Interested students
should advise their instructor of
their intent to participate. | |
F or students the program teaches a
lot about accounting they could never learn through
lectures or textbooks. It provides support in making a
decision that will have an impact on the rest of their
lives. The program gives them a chance to practice
oral and written communication skills with a
professional who could be helpful in identifying
future employment opportunities. For mentors
the relationship offers a chance to give back, or to
perform community service, to the school. It brings
the mentor in touch with a student who may be a
potential hire. For a younger practitioner it is an
excellent means of making or retaining a connection
with his or her alma mater. Of course, it also makes
you feel valued to know that your advice will help
someone make a very important, and sometimes
difficult, career decision.
The
Mentoring
Program:
One Participant’s Point
of View
D uring my sophomore
year I had the opportunity to participate in
John Carroll University’s department of
accountancy mentorship program. It put me in
contact with Rob Mackinlay, a second-year staff
accountant at KPMG LLP in Cleveland. We
communicated frequently by phone and e-mail and
met for lunch about once a month. This
experience provided a wealth of information that
enabled me to make an informed career decision.
I had questions about interviewing,
auditing and the firm’s junior-year internship
program. Rob gave me insight based on his own
experiences, told me what influenced his
decisions and answered questions on topics
ranging from what an audit entails to what to
wear to an office visit. The mentorship
program let me ask someone who had recently
gone through this experience about these
things. Before this opportunity came along, I
was familiar with some of the other accounting
firms but was not aware of what KPMG had to
offer. Rob gave me a great deal of information
about KPMG—its internship program, its culture
and the various career options the firm
offers. The mentorship program was
very successful for me. It gave me the chance
to get a different perspective on accounting
in a relaxed and casual atmosphere. Rob’s
guidance continued through my internship at
KPMG, where I worked with him on various
engagements. Even though I feel having Rob as
a mentor influenced my eventual decision to
accept an offer with KPMG for both an
internship and full-time employment, I don’t
feel he was making any type of sales pitch for
the firm, but was more of a friend providing
valuable information that I could use.
—Nicholas M. Mehall, KPMG, Cleveland. |
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