Mike Dillman, a fourth-year accounting student at Vancouver Island University, is a national award winner.
He won first place and $500 in the 2011 Estey Undergraduate Student Paper Competition run by the Centre for Accounting Ethics at the University of Waterloo. The competition focuses on business ethics. Judging is a blind review process and the competition attracts submissions from across Canada.
Dillman is the first VIU student to win the competition. In addition to his $500 cash prize, Dillman received an all-expenses paid trip to the Canadian Academic Accounting Association’s annual conference in Toronto in May where he was recognized and given the opportunity to present his paper to faculty.
Chris Burnley, VIU accounting professor said Dillman’s research paper – Teaching Ethics Under IFRS: Developing Ethical Reasoning Skills in Accounting Students – is exceptional.
“Mike’s paper, and the research in support of it, are something that both accounting faculty and the educational arms of the professional accounting bodies can use as the basis for a discussion about how ethics is addressed in our curriculums,” he said.
Meanwhile, Burnley won second place in the accounting association’s 2011 Howard Teall Innovation in the Accounting Education Award competition.
The competition recognizes faculty who have developed unique approaches to accounting education or ways of motivating their students with original learning activities.