Bissett Insider

Bissett School of Business BASS Students host 13th Annual Golf Tournament

The 13th annual BASS golf tournament was held Friday September 30, 2016 at River Spirit Golf Club.  Thank you to the 36 professional accountants and 36 accounting students who made the tournament a success.

The annual tournament is designed so accounting students can spend a day networking with accounting professionals and learn more about working as a professional accountant.  BASS executive and members have designed the tournament to provide fun and friendly competition for players of all levels.

The tournament itself was sponsored by the Chartered Professional Accountants (CPA) of Alberta, the professional organization representing more than 28,000 CPAs across the province.  Representing CPA Alberta and speaking at the tournament breakfast was Farah Albert CPA, CA, CPA (IL, USA).  Sarah serves as Director Business Development at CPA Alberta.  Sarah spoke to recent and future CPA developments relating to articling pathways into the profession.  Her updates on the CPA qualifying experience requirements were well received by both students and professional accountants.  The audience was very attentive since half of Alberta articling students follow the pre-approved program route, with the other half following the experience verification route.

Gordon Turtle, Senior Vice-President, Communications at CPA Alberta spoke to tournament participants and guests at dinner.  Gordon provided a brief overview of the current priorities of CPA Alberta within the context of the evolution of the CPA designation in Alberta.  Reminding attendees that the accounting profession in Alberta was unified on July 1, 2015 Gordon stressed that any CPA candidate qualifying as a CPA after that date must brand themselves with the CPA designation following their name.  Following unification, brand value from the each of the CA, CMA and CGA designations is transferred to the CPA by members appending their relative legacy designation in the style of “CPA, CA”, “CPA, CGA”, or “CPA, CMA” after their name.  Gordon also stressed the importance of professional ethics as practiced by CPA Alberta members.  In order for CPA Alberta to continue as a self-regulated profession serving the public, maintaining high ethical standards within the profession is critical.

Many thanks to the following professional accounting organizations who supported our students in this tournament by providing professional accountant golfers and acting as hole sponsors:

  • CPA Alberta*
  • Critical Mass**
  • BDO
  • Crescent Point Energy**
  • EY
  • PCL Construction
  • Deloitte
  • Collins Barrow
  • ARC Resources**
  • KPMG
  • Phillips 66
  • MNP
  • Western Energy Services**
  • Gregory Harriman & Associates LLP
  • JMH & Co.
  • CPA Alberta
  • Mount Royal University

*Event sponsor,  **Hole sponsor

 

Institute of Community Prosperity Introduces New Conversations

 

About New Conversations
Hosted by Mount Royal University’s Institute for Community Prosperity, the New Conversations events are designed to challenge ideas and provoke dialogue around important and emergent community topics. Citizens, leaders, innovators, students, and community members provide a rich atmosphere for diverse and powerful discussion. The Institute for Community Prosperity is hosting October’s New Conversations event in partnership with Calgary Employment First Network.
About Octobers New Conversations:
October is Depression Awareness Month, as well as Disability Employment Awareness Month (DEAM), and so a dialogue on ‘Inclusive Community’ will be both fitting and powerful. It is important to recognize that all disabilities, visible and invisible, have a place within community, and therefore fall within the scope of this topic and event.
 
The event will consist of a Pecha-Kucha-style presentation that provides a series of storytellers with 7 minutes to speak to their personal experience or story that relates to the topic of disability within an inclusive community. Storytellers will all then host table discussions about their respective topics with small groups of audience members.

Presenters:

Bissett School of Business students participate in a town hall consultation with the Federal Minister of Finance

In its budget consultation process (#budget2017), the Federal Government presented students the opportunity to discuss and share ideas with the Federal Minister of Finance, Bill Moreau. A number of our own Bissett business students tool the opportunity to particiapate in the Google town hall consultation.

The video is available on online at the following link: http://budget-lebudget.ca/

 

Finance Students looking forward to upcoming events

The 12th Annual ATB Investor Services Investment Challenge, otherwise known as the Bissett Stock Market Competition, is up and running. Students in teams of three have until March 31, 2017 to maximize their returns in a real-time simulation. The members of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams win cash prizes and a luncheon with members of ATB Investor Services. The 1st place team is also immortalized on the Stock Market Competition trophy. The competition is grateful to ATB for their support of this competition. For more details, contact Jim Fischer.
 
 
The Financial Students Organization (FSO) has undertaken some fund raising initiatives this semester. On a challenge from Jim Fischer, the FSO is attempting to raise $2,000 to be split evenly between the Terry Fox Foundation and the United Way. If they are successful, the stakes are a public shaving of Jim’s beard on October 25! This much anticipated event will take place in the Bissett 2nd floor atrium at 12:00 noon. Refreshment will be provided. 

Mount Royal University Assistant Professors, Leah Hamilton and Mohammed El Hazzouri, receive Research Grant

Bissett School of Business congratulates Leah and Mohammed on receiving a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Leah and Mohammed will be the lead investigators for  the Calgary portion of the study.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada –Targeted Rapid Response Research on Syrian Refugees

“Optimizing the Provision of Information to Facilitate the Settlement and Integration of Refugees in Canada: Case Studies of Syrian Refugees in London, Ontario and Calgary, Alberta”

Investigators: Esses, Hamilton, Pyati, & El Hazzouri

 Amount: $23,560 over one year

Writing a book and rattling chains…..all in a day’s work for David Finch and Ray DePaul

Bissett School of Business would like to congratulate Mount Royal University Associate Professor, David Finch and Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Director, Ray DePaul,  on the successful publication of their new book:  Designing You: Life Beyond Your Grades.

In Designing You, David and Ray challenge you become your own product manager. To do this, they take you through a multi-step process to define your Whole Product – the Whole YOU. In doing this, Finch and DePaul, Whole YOU goes far beyond just questions about career goals but also explores larger life goals and how they relate to each other. In the first month over 500 students and faculty downloaded the eBook. The print edition will be released on November 15th and will be available online and from the university bookstore.

To support the launch of the book, Finch and DePaul penned an article in the Huffington Post entitled “Don’t Let Yourself (or your kid) Become the Next BlackBerry“. In this article they use a smartphone analogy to help students understand the importance of being adaptable and relevant as markets change. This article received some notoriety and an angry response from BlackBerry COO himself, Marty Beard who argued that students should aspire to be like BlackBerry. Finch and DePaul responded by identifying the (some) elements of the BlackBerry that can offer guidance to students today. As an interesting (and ironic) end to this story, shortly after this response, BlackBerry announced they will be discontinuing design and production of handsets.

Finch and DePaul don’t view Designing YOU as a book, rather it as a mindset supported by a range of tools that enables students to connect their postsecondary experience to larger life goals. For example, this semester Finch and DePaul are piloting a Designing YOU course and are working with MRU Continuing Education and other MRU departments to develop an online course to support our students design their lives.

For more information on Designing YOU you can go to the website www.designingyou.org

For a $10 discount for MRU faculty off the eBook/ Print bundle you can use promo code “whole you”.

Assistant Professor, Rajbir Bhatti, pursuing research opportunities.

Dr. Bhatti’s current endeavors include  supervising a Doctoral student at the Atahbasca University in the use of Data Envelopment Analysis for performance measurement of
manufacturers in Canada.  The topic of the research work is
“Performance Measurement of Heavy Equipment Dealerships Using Data
Envelopment Analysis (DEA)” .

Further to that, one of Dr. Bhatti’s research works has been accepted for presentation at the “IVth International Conference on Production & Industrial Engineering
(CPIE-2016)” to held from December 19-21, 2016 in India. The title of
our research paper is ” Identification of Human Related Success
Factors for TPM Implementation in Indian SMEs – Graph Theoretic
Approach (GTA)”

Melanie Peacock wins Professional Achievement Award

CONGRATULATIONS are in order for our very own Dr. Melanie Peacock on being awarded the of Western University alumni award for Professional Achievement.
We all know that Melanie to be a very valuable member of our team, an accomplished teacher, author, speaker and is held in high regard by the HR profession. She has received several teaching and professional accolades and now she is being recognized by her alma mater for another well-deserved award.
You can read more about the award at http://www.mtroyal.ca/ourcommunity/