Manhattan High students left school Thursday morning to attend Kansas State University Accounting Camp, where they participated in several activities. KSUAC is a conference for accounting students — sponsored by the Kansas Society of CPAs and hosted by K-State — that provides information about accounting. The accounting camp lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.  

At the event students were paired into teams with other students and K-State students and people from companies that hire out of K-State’s accounting students for internships and jobs. Each group participated in activities like an extreme rock-paper-scissors competition, a team video contest, and heard from a variety of speakers.

Throughout the day accounting students heard from Devin Henderson, a comedian and inspirational speaker, who gave information in his speech titled “Somethings Greater is Always Possible;” Stan Webber, a K-State Broadcaster and President and CFO of Tower properties, who shared about his accounting experiences in his speech, “The Business Athlete’s Exciting Future;” and Jerica Newby with BKD CPAs and Advisors presented her speech called “Be a Pro in Your Career Game.”

“The students got to experience a combination of [different] types of things in the day,” Accounting and Finance teacher Glenda Eichmann said.“They were able to go around to different tables where there were some of the companies and they gave them some of their ‘swag’ and talked to them about what it would be like if they were to do an internship or work for those companies.”

This isn’t the first time the accounting camp has occurred. 

“They’ve done it in the past but it’s been a while, especially with the pandemic,” Eichmann said. “[There hasn’t been an accounting camp] at K-State before so that put it close and [made it] easy for us to be able to do, The Kansas Society of CPAs has done this in the past and will continue to do it, just in different universities who [will] host.”

Students enjoyed this event too as it was their first time going. 

“I liked meeting all the new people from different schools and how we all interacted with each other,” senior Jack Campbell said. “Accounting is very flexible and there’s a lot of perks to being in that business even if you’re not an accountant, an accounting degree can help you in a lot of different aspects of life.” 

Junior Elizabeth Bahlmann shared his experience at KSUAC.

“We did a lot of really cool activities, and then there were a lot of prizes, and they gave out a lot of things, they showed us all of the firms and we got to ask questions about how they work and like their time off protocol and whether or not you can work remote.”

The career advice was also beneficial to students.

“We got to hear from colleges around the state and got to hear from some business companies as well from around the state,” senior JP Scheele said. “It really kind of helped me find out what accounting is and see if I want to do accounting later.”