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Student figures it out

7 May 2008

Undergraduate student Jarrod Bayliss-McCulloch

Undergraduate student Jarrod Bayliss-McCulloch will present his winning solutions to Oxfam Australia as winner of the first round of the inaugural Chartered Accountants Student Challenge.

Monash University student Jarrod Bayliss-McCulloch has taken out the first round of the inaugural Chartered Accountants Student Challenge.

An industry-first, the Student Challenge is the latest initiative from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and utilises Facebook and the Figured it Out Yet website to engage with students in an online environment.

The competition allows students to develop real-life business challenges for three global not-for-profit organisations, introducing them to practical chartered accounting.

For the first challenge, students nationwide were asked to identify Oxfam Australia's six key business risks and ways to mitigate them. Mr Bayless-McCulloch’s team, Total Risk Solutions, now has the opportunity to present his winning solution to Oxfam Australia, before spending two weeks at one of the locations where Oxfam Australia operates.  

Each team had just two weeks to prepare and submit their solutions with responses and were then judged on four main criteria -- technical knowledge, innovation, presentation and participation.

"We were very impressed with the quality of entries and the depth of analysis the students had taken," Oxfam Australia Director of Finance and Information Systems Craig Barry said.

"Some of the ideas for mitigation had not been previously considered by Oxfam and I look forward to meeting Jarrod when he presents to our management to discuss his ideas."

Mr Bayliss-McCulloch said: "I saw the challenge as a fantastic opportunity to combine my personal interest in not-for-profit organisations with the opportunity to put some professional skills into practice."

The final Student Challenge concludes in July 2008. For more details visit the Figured it Out Yet website.

Meanwhile, third-year Commerce and Law student Gregory Shinsky has been selected as a finalist for this year's St Gallen Wings of Excellence Awards and will participate in the St Gallen Symposium in Switzerland later this year.

The aim of the symposium is to stimulate thought and action for the sustained success of companies and societies in a globalised world. Entrepreneurs, top managers, politicians, scientists and students from more than 60 nations will attend.

Mr Shinsky was selected as a student finalist on the strength of an essay he wrote called The economic relevance of values: cause for political, philosophical or entrepreneurial thought on the foundation of global capitalism.