On Aug. 24, the Accounting Scholars Association (ASA) held their first monthly meeting in the Harvey Business Hall. The organization started to form during the spring 2022 semester to create this group for accounting and other business majors alike.
Similar to the American Marketing Association, the ASA plans to outreach to professionals and provide networking opportunities for students. This will better their academic career path as they navigate their degree plan.
Assistant professor of accounting Jillian Poyzer-Johnson helped guide the new student leadership team for ASA along with other accounting faculty.
“We’re all just trying to work together and figure it out,” Johnson said. “I do have a great set of officers who are willing to help each other out and do whatever it takes, regardless of what their official title of what they were elected to do is.”
Johnson said they want the ASA to become an entirely student run group, so they can gain their own professional skills.
“I do think student leadership is crucial, and having an organization which supports that will be super important for these accounting students, and will develop professional skills,” Johnson said.
Sophomore Chloe Voss is the ASA director of membership and has been working with the president Paris Stokes and the rest of the officer team. She said the ASA is an essential component of the Oklahoma Christian University business department.
“The main goal of ASA is to equip accounting students with skills and knowledge needed to successfully pursue a career in accounting,” Voss said. “To help them understand how God is glorified in the practice of accounting.”
The ASA will start with monthly meetings where they invite accounting professionals to speak and provide guidance for current accounting and finance students. At their first meeting, ASA had the Oklahoma Society of CPAs talk about the high demand for accounting professionals.
Johnson said potential employers are more likely to hire a student for accounting if they were involved in something like the ASA.
“The accounting skill set is more than just understanding debits, credits and bookkeeping,” Johnson said. “You have to be a good communicator; you have to be able to communicate both at a professional level, but also be good at networking.”
It has been several years since Oklahoma Christian has had any kind of accounting club on campus. Voss said the ASA will connect students with various kinds of contacts and resources after college.
“ASA is an essential component of the business department because there is such a wide range of business majors, and not enough clubs to represent them all,” Voss said. “ASA looks at the world of accounting, since many students may not know the different career paths that surround accounting.”
The ASA has the potential to grow within the next five years at Oklahoma Christian. This can only come from student participation and involvement from all kinds of business majors.
“We didn’t want to put a lot of barriers on entry into the organization,” Johnson said. “We want to make sure that it is open to anybody and everybody at any academic level, but I would certainly want the majority of our accounting students to be members.”
The ASA will send out more information about future meetings and events as the fall semester progresses. For more information on joining, contact Chloe Voss at chloe.voss@eagles.oc.edu.
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