McCoy Makes A Case For Competition

On November 5, a team of RMU accounting students (Amanda Choma, Michael McCoy, and Danielle Silofau) competed against 19 undergraduate student teams from area Universities in a case competition organized by the Pittsburgh Chapter of two prominent professional accounting organizations: IIA (The Institute of Internal Auditors) and PICPA (Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs). Eight of the teams made it to the second round and the RMU School of Business team came out on top winning first place!

The Case Competition is an interactive, educational, collaborative event that challenges students to work with their peers to analyze data, develop ideas, and communicate their findings. Michael McCoy, learned much from his participation in the event and has these words to share with fellow students about his experience.

“For me the IIA/PICPA case study competition was an interesting opportunity. It gave me the chance to engage in an academic competition and explore my interest in auditing. The competition was an experience that I look forward to repeating next year. There was a lot of work involved in trying to perfect the written and oral presentations. I think in the future there will be significantly less time involved in completing the project though. This year none of our team had completed an audit class or had any practical auditing experience, so we invested a significant amount of time in teaching ourselves auditing principles and practices. One of the primary reasons that I was interested in completing the competition is that I enjoy a challenge. Having about a month to teach yourself a topic that you are not familiar with on an academic level is definitely a challenge. But, I feel like Robert Morris does a great job of encouraging students to push themselves and strive to meet their potential. Which is exactly what Dr. Fratto and Dr. Peng did for us during the competition. They took time out of their schedules to critique our writing and presentation strategies. It wasn’t something that they had to do, but if you have a goal that you want to pursue there’s always someone here willing to mentor you.”

Perhaps hearing Michael’s story will encourage you to join the competition next year, and hopefully experience the same sense of accomplishment and success.

Congratulations to this team of students and their faculty advisors on a job well-done!