Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/124472
headlines Seeing It Up Close: Global Social Entrepreneurship Last fall, the nonprofit World Bicycle Relief (WBR) distributed more than 100,000 bicycles and trained more than 750 bike mechanics in developing countries to allow hundreds of thousands of people to more easily travel to work or to school. To develop a financial model for its program in the rapid growth market of Zambia, WBR recruited a team of students from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The collaboration with WBR is part of a new category of electives created by Darden for its full-time MBA. The Global Field Experiences electives (GFEs) will expose students to corporate social innovation by sending them to locations around the world. The pilot of the WBR project culminated with students taking a weeklong journey to Zambia last December. The six second-year Darden students selected for the WBR elective had a three-pronged assignment: Review the current WBR model and recommend changes; create a pitchbook to aid in raising new capital; and develop a potential investor base. "We had to anticipate the questions an investor would have in evaluating WBR against competitors," says student Leidy Lebron. She adds that, although WBR has demonstrated significant impact on people's lives across Africa, exacting quantifiable metrics was more difficult. Students found their field visit to Zambia to be one of the highlights of the elective. "After working so hard on the project, it was great to view both the nuts and bolts of the operation and the social impact it creates," says student Jay Beekman. A second GFE also took place last fall in Tunisia when Darden students teamed up with peers from the Mediterranean School of Business to develop business plans that will support families facing Alzheimer's diagnoses and bring branchless banking to Tunisians for the first time. In future years, the school plans to expand the number and type of GFEs offered. Accounting for the Future The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and the Management Accounting Section (MAS) of the American Accounting Association (AAA) have issued a report that aims to bridge the perceived gap between what accounting students learn in school and what they need to know on the job. "Future Accounting Education: Preparing for the Expanding Profession," which was presented earlier this year by the IMA-MAS Curriculum Task Force, is a response to recommendations made by the Pathways Commission on Accounting Higher Education. (See "Improving Accounting" in BizEd's November/December 2012 Headlines department.) The Pathways Commission was formed in 2010 as a joint initiative between the AAA and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to study the future of accounting education. 12 May/June 2013 BizEd Among the recommendations made by the IMA and AAA are that accounting education should put more emphasis on long-term career demands; that knowledge, skills, and abilities be treated as integrated competencies; and that accounting curricula should embrace how accountants add value to organizations. According to the report, accounting organizations and educators spend too much effort defining entry-level accounting competencies and too little time "explicitly defining the competencies accountants need for their long-run careers…and helping to develop these long-run competencies within the formal accounting curriculum." Task force chair and IMA's vice president of research Raef Lawson presented the recommendations. His report can be viewed at bit.ly/XyruKt.