The combination of business skills and sustainable thinking within a school community can never go unnoticed, according to George Brown College’s (GBC) Sustainability Squad. To kick-off reading week, Georgy Pyle, the president of the Sustainability Squad and Maria Mamone, a CPA board of ambassador for the school, are hosting a case study competition.
The case study was launched on March 1 for participants, and the submission is on March 3. Winners will be announced on March 4 and the team placed first can earn a $500 prize.
According to Pyle, the competition will not only assess a student’s knowledge in environmental sustainability but challenge them to be creative despite the pandemic’s barriers.
“Even with the online format, students can find a platform to connect,” said Pyle. “That’s why we created this competition: To boost the confidence and to allow students to accomplish what they can.”
Mamone adds that the competition can allow students to gain awareness in other business-related fields. Even though the theme is accounting and sustainability, the case study also relates to fashion or finance, as many of them came from different educational backgrounds and experiences.
“We do have a lot of first years, of course, but we have other people from the upper semester,” said Mamone. “The thing is that there is no difference between fourth year and first year, because we are not asking them to have general knowledge about accounting. In fact, we want them to apply and research. So, we try to approach a topic that can involve different semesters at the same level.”
The competition started as Mamone’s idea during a tutorial session. As a financial peer leader and professor assistant, she noticed that first semester students in accounting courses were confused about the course material, and unaware of the projects offered by the college community.
“When I asked them why they can’t participate in competitions, their answer was that they don’t have the experience, so they might not be able to win over other students who have experience,” said Mamone. “They also said that they didn’t have any courage to participate.”
Hence, Mamone wanted to create an event where students, from different backgrounds, can come together and learn more about accounting. From that point on, she contacted the Student Association at George Brown College (SAGBC), and got in touch with the Sustainability Squad. When Pyle agreed to Mamone’s offer, they both knew that combining sustainability with accounting will be appealing for the students.
“CPAs are leaders too and accounting is not the middle topic for the CPA,” said Mamone. “Of course they are accountants but the main thing they care about is sustainability as well.”
After Pyle and Mamone decided to work together, they started to seek judges, writers, and team members. Mamone recalls the process and says that finding connections to host the event was a hassle at first.
“Finding case writers was difficult, as most wrote CPA cases, which were different from the case competition. Then, when it came to finding professors and judges, we had to contact a lot of people from a business or sustainability background. Moreover, we had to find the right person to market our event as well,” said Mamone.
Fortunately, most of the instructors and professionals whom Mamone contacted were willing to offer help. Pyle and Mamone worked on the marketing aspect, along with GBC’s business department. Utilizing Blackboard and social media to create content about their competition, 21 students decided to sign up.
“We didn’t need 300 participants, we only needed enough to have a solid amount of teams,” said Pyle. “We were worried about how to adjust and how many teams will show up. But we were right in what we wanted and that was the perfect number in the end.”
According to Pyle and Mamone, sustainability will continue to be an important topic for schools in the future. Both of them hope that learning about these environmental issues can allow others to come together as a community.
“GBC has goals laid out for sustainability, and every program has one course embedded that focuses on sustainability goals,” said Pyle.
Moreover, Pyle and Mamone hope that students can become leaders who emphasize on corporate social responsibility. Even though collaborating and completing a live event can be mentally draining on everyone’s schedules, finding the connection and the motivation is important, regardless of the rankings.
“Though GBC’s community does feel closed off at times, it speaks to the importance of finding your communities or who you do connect with,” said Pyle. “Like when Maria said, she was finding a collaborator, she was seeing who else was out there in the community. And if we boost each other up, it really does show how successful it could be.”
