Dear Angie

Hello to all of you from Dear Angie.

This will be our last meeting by paper, as the 21^st century beckons us to enter that ubiquitous internet world.

Our annual meeting is just around the corner and I look forward to meeting and re-meeting many of you. The education sessions at this year’s conference are packed with opportunities to improve our teaching skills, and keep on the leading edge of what is new in our accounting world.

Be sure to consider the sessions led by Peter Wilson and Jim Erskine. Peter, who has just been named one of the AAA’s 2005 Outstanding Educators, will shed light on inspiring students to learn and on keeping our joy for teaching alive. Jim is one of the world’s experts in teaching with cases and is an amazing teacher himself. Every time I talk to Jim I learn something that improves my teaching.

Back by popular demand is an open session to discuss any teaching issues and challenges you would like. David Drake will help us share our experiences.

Howard Armitage, a 3M teacher, and an expert on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is taking us further into its abilities with a focus on strategy mapping (SM)and how BSCs and SMs might be used strategically in an academic environment.

Alan Wright provides us with the opportunity to learn from an expert how to create a winning teaching portfolio. Creating a great teaching portfolio allows us to reflect on and improve our teaching and will make preparing for our annual performance evaluations easier and could go a long way to making that process more rewarding.

Of interest to everyone will be a session led by Tom Scott and Peter Martin from the Accounting Standards Board outlining the Board’s new strategy for establishing standards in Canada. Hot off the press, these changes will impact our educational and financial reporting processes.

In addition to all these experts, we will have the Innovation in Accounting Education winners presenting their winning entries. I, for one, can always use novel methods to bring accounting to students. Also, make sure that you take in the Learning Strategies Poster session outlining more innovations in the classroom.

Two great plenary sessions with world class panels will discuss the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and teaching and researching in the post-Enron era. The timeliness of these two sessions warrants all our attendance.

The conference also provides a forum for the heads of accounting departments at universities and colleges to meet and discuss the opportunities and challenges that face us in delivering post-secondary accounting education.

If you have not ever participated in the Ethics Workshop sponsored by the Centre for Accounting Ethics at the University of Waterloo this should be your year. I have attended several of the workshops, each time coming away with a renewed interest in the ethics issues related to accounting and how I might bring that home to my students.

Combine all these great education sessions with amazing research and plenary sessions as well as the chance to make new and renew old acquaintances in a city that is as unique and beautiful as Quebec City and this year’s conference promises to be unforgettable.

Dear Angie will SEE YOU THERE !

PS: Don’t forget to send your questions and suggestions to Dear Angie for upcoming newletters. The electronic version without length restrictions will allow a much broader discussion of our classroom experiences.

Educator’s Forum

As this is our last paper issue, allow me to point out a major advantage of moving to an electronic format article length. This month is a perfect example of an amazing article for the forum that is too long to print in paper entitled Confessions of an (Innovative) Educator. It is written by Howard Armitage, a 2004 3M teaching award winner, and is a speech delivered to an education audience. It is Howard’s Top Six List on how to become an inspiring innovative highly successful educator. It is well-written, witty, and inspiring. It will be posted on the website very shortly. Thanks Howard for sharing your thoughts with us all.

As chair of the Education Committee, I want to take this opportunity to thank the members of the committee for all their hard work this past year. The bounds of the committee’s responsibilities has grown tremendously over the past year or two and the members of this committee have stepped up and donated countless hours to organize educational experiences for us all. To each and everyone of you my heartfelt appreciation.

Brenda Blakely - Grant MacEwan College
David Drake - Centennial College
Gale Evans - CMA Canada (Chair - Regional Education Sessions)
John D. Russell - University of Saskatchewan
Robin Hemmingsen - Centennial College
Suresh Kalagnanam - University of Saskatchewan (Chair - Case Competition)
Pascale Lapoint - Universite´ Laval (Chair - Innovation Awards)
Marg Forbes – University of Saskatchewan
Ron Francis – Seneca College
Monique Levesque – Universite´ de Moncton
Grant Russell – University of Waterloo
Lou Richards – Southern Alberta Institute of Technology
Nicola Young – Saint Mary’s University (Chair – Learning Strategies Exchange)

And a special thank you to Gerald Trites from Saint Francis Xavier University

who is chair of the newest addition to the education endeavors, the IT/SAP Seminar Series Committee. Jerry’s team consists of Samir Trabelsi from Brock University, Murray Lindsay from the University of Western Ontario, Karim Jamal from the University of Alberta, Eduardo Schiehll from Carleton University, Francois Brouard from Carleton University, and Anthony Wensley from the University of Toronto. Thanks to each of you for all the work you have been doing organizing these regional events.

Angela Downey, University of Lethbridge

Chair CAAA Education Committee

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