What’s New with the Chapter?

By Joseph A. Forlenza, CPA

I recently attended the Accounting Educator and Practitioner Roundtable Discussion Oct. 25. The CalCPA Accounting Education Committee wanted to hear from local practitioners about what we would like to see in accounting-related curricula to help shape the quality of new hires into the accounting profession.

When the AEC meets, it holds a three-hour roundtable discussion the afternoon prior to the committee meeting as part of its commitment to building and maintaining a strong relationship between accounting educators and practitioners. In the past, the committee has met with other educators, as well as young and emerging professionals to get their input and feedback on accounting education. It was a nice opportunity for local CPAs to give some feedback to educators regarding what types of skills are needed to survive in today’s increasingly competitive business environment.

High on the list of weaknesses of younger people coming out of school are written and verbal communication skills and the lack of work ethic. The work ethic could have been a product of the extremely tight labor market of the last few years, which has recently slackened significantly. Practitioners also expressed that more should be done to communicate to students the amount of work necessary after college in on-the-job training to obtain necessary skills and stay current in a very dynamic and rapidly changing career path.

On another note, I had the pleasure of attending the San Diego Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business Awards, for which Melody Thornton, our chapter’s vice president, was nominated. More than 1,000 people attended the event. This recognition is a great honor for Melody and our chapter. Thank you and congratulations to Melody for making such a positive impact on our profession and the local business community.

Your chapter board has selected Wesley Martin as its Outstanding Student Member and Laurie Schrimpf as Outstanding YEP Member to recognize their involvement in both the chapter and CalCPA. They will be our guests at our chapter’s Holiday Party and will receive a certificate of recognition from us.

Our chapter’s financial literacy initiative is moving along nicely. We are placing volunteers in the San Diego Unified School District high schools. I would like to express a big thank you to our volunteers: Melody Thornton, Paul Zimmer, Jill Elsner, Larry Kaplan, Carlos Gomez, Jeanne Shannon and Steve Wimmers.

On a final note, we just successfully completed our 13^th Annual Tax and Accounting Institute. We had very knowledgeable speakers, excellent food, numerous sponsors and a great committee. It was a pleasure to serve on the committee with our chair, Jeanne Shannon, and members Joan Alleckson, Dana Basney, Debbie Wall, Paul Zimmer and chapter program associate Cindy Holcomb. I would like to give special thanks to Jeremy Marquard for his technical assistance and to the local college students who assisted during registration.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.