SDSUs Beta Alpha Psi Chapter Wins Best Practices Competition
The Beta Eta chapter of Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) at San Diego State University’s Fowler College of Business took first place in the Beta Alpha Psi Western Regional Best Practices Competition held virtually in March 2021. The presentation was written, assembled and narrated by BAP’s current chapter president, Nicole Trimble, a fourth-year student in the BMACC program in the Charles W. Lamden School of Accountancy.
This slide details the Meet the Firms event that pivoted from an in-person event to an online scenario.
With more than 330 chapters around the globe, Beta Alpha Psi is an international honors organization for financial information students and professionals. The Beta Eta chapter at SDSU was established in 1960 as the 53rd chapter in the organization’s history.
Trimble shared her presentation, “Invest in your Community,” where she offered details on how the chapter was able to successfully host SDSU’s Spring 2021 Meet the Firms as a networking event so that other BAP chapters could do the same. Trimble uploaded her presentation to YouTube for the judges and the public to review. The judges included members of the BAP board of directors and staff members from Deloitte.
Meet the Firms is a networking event that provides the opportunity for SDSU accounting students to meet with the representatives of local accounting firms to discuss internships and job opportunities. The event was initially transformed from an in-person event to a virtual event at the suggestion of the SDSU chapter of the Association of Latino Professionals For America (ALPFA) to BAP and SDSU’s Student Accounting Society (SAS) when SAS hosted SDSU’s first-ever Meet the Firms virtual event during the fall of 2020.
The fall event was so successful that BAP collaborated with SAS and ALPHA to use the same technical roadmap when they hosted the second virtual Meet the Firms for the spring semester on February 19 and 26, 2021. Based on student and firm attendance (141 students and 18 firms), the spring event was equally as effective as fall’s virtual event and, in fact, attracted approximately the same number of attendees as the popular in-person events in previous years.
While it was the first time that the SDSU BAP chapter hosted the event, Trimble took the process a step further by documenting the technical and marketing details to share with other BAP chapters worldwide.
Trimble Outlined the Presentation Agenda to the competition judges.
It was this process Trimble shared with the judges during her presentation for the Western Regional Best Practices competition. In addition to discussing the virtual Meet the Firms technical structure and format, she also shared the challenges of moving from an in-person scenario to a virtual environment and the feedback from students and professionals.
“This event was considered a best practice because we have created an efficient and effective process in creating a virtual networking event,” said Trimble. “If another chapter were to follow the same processes we created, they too could re-create this best practice to host a successful virtual event.”
Trimble is now preparing to make her presentation at the national BAP event, where all the regional Best Practices Competition winners will compete for top honors August 5 – 7, 2021.
