Talent Pipeline

College path cleared for students in a partnership between Ernst & Young and the McCombs Department of Accounting.

By Judie Kinonen

Growing up in rural east Texas, Nohema Mendoza, BBA ’17, MPA ’18, says her college aspirations were planted early by parents who had emigrated from Mexico as young adults. Her father earned his GED and worked in the trucking business, and her mother completed one year of college in Mexico, but Mendoza, who now works in assurance with Ernst & Young in Dallas, says her parents had high academic hopes for their three children. “As a child, I remember my mom would sit down with me and do math problems,” Mendoza says. “It was just molded into who I was, that I was going to graduate from high school and go to college — even though the path may not have been super clear.”

Clearing that college path for students like Mendoza is the mission behind a six-day summer camp offered through a partnership be-tween Ernst & Young and McCombs’ Department of Accounting.

Now in its 15th year under Ernst & Young’s sole sponsorship, the camp — Discover Yourself in Accounting Majors and Careers (DYNAMC) — is an all-expenses-paid program for about 50 rising high school juniors and seniors. Students of all backgrounds may apply, while the program strongly encourages applications from outstanding African-American, Latino, and Native American students, first-generation students, and those who have overcome social or economic hardship.

McCombs’ Director of Undergraduate Recruitment and Scholarships Charles Enriquez has run the program since 2006. He says the camp plays an important role in filling the recruiting pipeline — from high school to college to Ernst & Young — with top accounting talent. More important, it fills a need in the field of accounting at large. “EY has been very open to say, ‘We really just want to see these students going into accounting. If we get our share, great. If not, that’s okay.’”

EY campus recruiter Valerie King, who works with Enriquez to organize the camp, agrees. “EY is deeply committed to expanding access to professional services careers to students of all backgrounds,” she says.

Only around 1 percent of CPAs are black or Native American, and about 3 percent Latino, according to a 2017 report published by the Association of International CPAs. The report also showed that only about 12 percent of students majoring in accounting were among these three underrepresented groups.

Even while these disparities persist, gifted high school math students today may not hear about business careers from their guidance counselors, says Enriquez. “Everybody is really pushing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) nowadays. So a lot of students are told, ‘If you’re good at math, go and be a doctor, be an engineer, do research for science. We’re trying to say, ‘There’s also business.’”

To that end, DYNAMC campers attend lectures from professionals in the field and from McCombs’ accounting faculty on a variety of topics — including tax, finance, business ethics, forensics, and entrepreneurship — to gain an idea of the breadth of the major. Meanwhile, they meet with a group of about eight team-mates to prepare for a case competition judged by executives from Ernst & Young.

Students also attend panel discussions with Ernst & Young staff and tour the Austin office. Says King: “By providing an introduction to all of the career opportunities and dispelling many of the myths associated with accounting, we believe we can attract more talented under-represented students to a great profession.”

DYNAMC alumna and accounting major Davionne Needom, BBA ’20, MPA ’21, says the experience vastly broadened her perspective. “There are a lot of myths about accounting, and I’d heard people say, ‘Accountants just sit in a cubicle all day and crunch numbers,’” says Needom. “But being with the professionals coming in and touring the EY office, that’s when I started to learn what you could do with this degree and where you can go. There’s so much more than what the myths entail.”

Alexandra Webb, BBA ’15, agrees. “What impacted me most was hearing from the professionals — people I identified with, who were doing well in life — explaining what they do every day,” she says.

That exposure to a variety of career paths in accounting and to critical business skills — group projects, presentations, and networking — helps attract talented students to the profession while giving them a taste of college life, King says.

“The program makes being in the halls of a top-flight institution of higher learning a reality and not just a concept,” King says. “By having students spend a week in the dorms and attend sessions both on campus and incorporate set-tings, it brings their opportunities to life.”

Such was true for rising senior Mendoza, who describes her DYNAMC week as “eye-opening.”

“I was just being introduced to a whole different world,” she says. “I knew it existed, but I didn’t really know how attainable it was or how it would feel to be there and have all these people supporting me.”

Indeed, DYNAMC is designed as a steady support beyond those six days, providing mentors and community for campers who go on to apply and gain acceptance to McCombs.

That first year at McCombs can be uniquely daunting for some of these students, Enriquez says. “They’ve always been the top students in their school. Now they’re in a program where everybody else is as strong as they are, and they’re struggling,” he says. For first-generation college students who call home for advice, their families may not know to suggest talking to the professor during office hours, or seeking out tutoring.

Beyond these practical obstacles, many DYNAMC students come from Houston, Dallas, the Rio Grande Valley, or other minority underrepresented communities, says Enriquez. “Then we bring them to a place like UT Austin where they’re definitely the minority. Realizing that you might be one of the few, if not the only, student who looks like you in that classroom. There becomes a sense of, ‘Do I belong here?’”

So fostering that sense of belonging is key for DYNAMC staff, Enriquez says.

“We tell our students, ‘You attended the program in high school and now that you’re here as a freshman, that camp didn’t end.’” Former campers often find each other on campus and forge friendships on that foundation, Enriquez says.

In fact, a number of DYNAMC alumni return to the camp as student counselors. They stay in the dormitories with the campers, guide them through their case project, and answer their many questions, says Webb, who worked as a counselor the summer after her freshman year at McCombs. “These high schoolers didn’t know what college was like or what it’s like to take real business courses,” she says. “My little group of campers, we were always up late just talking. I added them on social media, and most of them still talk to me to this day.”

Webb and Mendoza have come full circle now — from DYNAMC campers to McCombs students to EY representatives talking with campers this summer. Says Mendoza, “I got to answer all of their questions, and it was just truly astounding to see how much I had changed.

“I kept imagining myself in their shoes about seven years ago, and it just made me very grateful for everything, grateful for this program. I wanted to be an example for them to make them realize, ‘I was you seven years ago, and this could be you in the future. You can do it as well.’”

This article appeared in the fall 2019 issue of McCombs magazine. Click on the link to see the full issue.