Sidelines Missouri State 09.12.26 - Pendleton Family Schedule of Accountancy

0:00Music Happy Saturday afternoon everyone and welcome to Side Lines Missouri State. We're here every Saturday at noon and we talk about everything relating to Missouri State University. We talk athletics, we talk academia, talk about the social connection. What is it that your local university can do for you? How can you benefit them and how can they benefit you? They want to be your business partner, they want to work closely together with you and we have a great show planned for you today. But before we get to that, we had a football game this last week and we've got a home opener coming up tonight. Daring how excited are you about that? I am excited because I want to see how we rebound from last week's game. We played a very, very good SEC opponent who still ranked in the top 10 as of this week.

1:05Who potentially could be in the top 5 team, we just don't know. So it's going to be interesting to see what we look like. We should do fine against Lina Woodenby when that game pretty easily I think. But we'll see how it goes. That's why they play the game. Before we go over to Tom Strong, I want to mention that the Strong Law firm is one of the sponsors we have for this show and we are excited that they have done so and helped promote the university. Some people may not know this, but Tom Strong graduated from Missouri State in 1952. He opened up a law office or went to work as an attorney in 1957. Have I got that right Tom? Close. Where did I miss it? Well, let's see here. I graduated from law school in 55, counterintelligence corps for 52 years, for two years. So yeah, it's all worth 57. So I was in the ballpark at least. Yeah. Okay, very good. Well, it's always great to have you here and have your support.

2:06And if you're out there, you've had an accident or an injury, you need some help from a legal standpoint. I will just tell you, do yourself a favor and go to the website for the Strong Law firm. See the quality of the people that they've got that work at that firm before you make your decision. You'll make the right choice if you give yourself that opportunity. In addition, I want to mention that we are also sponsored by Sidebar, which is an eating and drinking establishment at 11-11 East Republic Road, which is just a stone's throw, west of national on Republic Road. If you've got a ball game that you want to see, you can watch your favorite sporting event there. And it's always the right place and the right time for good food, cold drinks, and great friends, sidebar. And they've got all sorts of food there that you can try out. Darren, I think that their tacos and their wings are one of the couple of their top items. You agree? It's a great place. Yeah, it's a great place for food and great tacos for sure. Hey, Tom, I have a question for you.

3:06So how many cases did you try? And how many cases did you win? I don't know how many I tried. When the cases did you lose? Let's go backwards. Come on. In your career. This is embarrassing. In the category of unfair questions. Was it one? No. I believe it was one case you lost in your entire career. I lost two cases. I don't count that first case because I read the book. So we're talking about strong law firm here being one of the top law firms in the United States. I'm just telling you, I'm going to reiterate this. If you have had a serious accident and you don't want to settle because all these other firms in town, that's what they do. They settle. Strong law firm will take, they'll go to court and they will fight and they win, obviously. They're one of the top and they learn from the best here with Tom Strong. There's no doubt about it. So Tom, you can pay me later because I've done a commercial for you now.

4:06So Tom, while we've got you here on the mic, you actually made the trip down to college station to see the Bears play a football game against Texas A&M. Tell us a little bit about it. It was a trip I will never forget and in a good way. I learned that our new coach and his staff and Sloan, his right-hand lady, who plans everything, this went smoothly as anything could go. Everything was on time, we landed. And the first thing that we did after we land was not go to the hotel. We went to the stadium because this stadium holds 105,000 people. And our stadium holds 17,000 people. So he wanted our players to see this monstrous stadium before the crowd was there and walked in and being overwhelmed by that.

5:07So we were there about an hour, explored the locker rooms. And then the experience of the game, we lost, of course. We lost 50 to zip. We were very, very proud of our defense. Our defense was on the field for 43 minutes. That's equal to a game and a half. And they were put in bad positions to try to defend against this monstrous team. The team was bigger than we were. They were faster than we were. They were better equipped than we were. And so this is what happens. We only had four, I mean, I'm sorry, we only had eight snaps in the second half on offense. So our defense was just constantly on the field. So coming away.

6:08It was 19 and nothing at half. I mean, we played a tremendous half, but we just could not get the defense. The offense just could not stay on the field long enough. And toward the end, the defense just finally wore down. Well, that's the game in a nutshell. You're right on target on that. So I would like to say this, however, every goal that we had before this game started, we still have. I mean, if we have a goal of winning conference, it's all there for us. So we shouldn't get down too much. We are a new team, first game, new coach, first game, and everything's going to work out. I think everybody understands the purpose of the game is for Missouri State to raise some revenue. And the football team does that, and it's an excess of a million dollars. And so that's no secret to anyone, and that's why these games are played. But the thing I was impressed by, Tom, is this team, Texas St. M, they did not take this game for granted at all.

7:13The discipline that they showed really reflected the overall goals that they have to win their conference. And they knew it started last Saturday, and they showed that out on the field. So the point that we made that it was 19-0.5, it was 26-0.5 as we were getting towards the end of the third quarter. And so you take a look at what the defense did out there. I'm amazed that they were able to do that because there's a lot of new faces out there, new schemes, and all that that's going on. Coming up tonight, the kickoff is at 6 p.m., I believe. It's going to be an exciting time for the Bears to have their home opener. Hope that you all can get out there tonight. We'll look forward to having you there. One more thing, Dennis. You said they did not take us lightly. They didn't. There were 107,000 announced in attendance in this 105,000 stadium.

8:14And they were loud. It was an atmosphere not to forget. You know, I always, someone told me a long time ago that you learn more from your failures than you do your successes. And I thought at the time as a young man, I thought, that does not sound like any fun at all. I'm not in favor of that. But the fact of the matter is, is life goes on and you have some of those hits to the mouth and black eyes and that kind of thing. You do learn a lot from that. I'm sure that the Bears walked away learning a lot as well. So with that in mind, let's move on to our guest, Darren. Yeah, we have an awesome show ahead of you today. We have Dr. Kimberly Swanson Church, who is the director of the School of Accountancy at Missouri State. We also have Instructor of Accounting, Kyle Gooden. And we have student Jared Novak. So welcome to the program, everyone. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. Let's start with Jared. Jared, tell us your student there. Tell us about why you chose Missouri State and what your track is now.

9:16Yeah, so I am a grad student at Missouri State. I am currently a graduate assistant with Appendleton Family School of Accountancy. Yeah, so I chose Missouri State, I don't know how many years ago there was this point five years ago. I'm so old these days. But I chose Missouri State because I really did enjoy the environment. And I knew I kind of wanted to go into business. I decided to go down the Accountancy Path because I actually took an intro to Accountancy class with one of the other guests here, Kyle Gooden. And he basically kind of encouraged me to kind of go on that path. I, and then Accountancy kind of really stuck with me. The reason that I kind of chose the Accounting Program is because I really liked the job stability in the area and the area to kind of improve with growth. So that is kind of why I chose that field. Accounting to me has always been kind of one of those things that I've kind of like to challenge myself. I think something in the Accounting field that I've always really enjoyed is the ability to kind of just challenge myself.

10:16So that's kind of why I've stuck with the Accounting field. Are you a local boy here? So I'm actually from the Kansas City area. Oh good. Yeah. Came down here. Yeah. They have an Accounting School in Kansas City. Yeah. Yeah. I really like this Springfield area. Yeah. Kyle Gooden, an instructor here in the School of Accountancy. The Pendleton Family School of Accountancy. It's still getting used to saying that. But I worked in, you know, as we nerds call it, an industry for a while. Almost 20 years in the industry, worked different jobs. Most of that time was spent with Mercy Health Systems here in Springfield working for them doing revenue and financial reporting and analysis and all kinds of fun stuff like that for them. After that, I went and I worked for the Missouri State Auditors Office, not the college, not the university, but the actual state of Missouri Auditors Office. And I worked on their public corruption and fraud team for a couple of years helping out with fraud audits, which was awesome.

11:17I got all kinds of fun stories about that. So we appreciate you guys introducing yourselves. Kimberly, we're going to have to save you for after the break because these guys, you brought some couple tigers along with you here. And you know, people think the Countens are shine. They look at your shoes instead of theirs if they're an extrovert, not the case here. We have sidelines of Missouri State. We're talking everything about Missouri State. We have the School of Accountancy here, the Pendleton School of Accountancy. We're going to talk some more about that right after this break. We're glad to have you here with us at Sidelines, Missouri State. We have a great show for you today. We've got three guests in the studio when they are all from the Pendleton School of Accountancy over at Missouri State University. And it is just amazing what they've been able to accomplish over there.

12:18Dick Pendleton was a 1966 graduate of Missouri State. He went to work for a firm known as BKD when they only had three offices. And now with their new name and the new company, they have over 40,000 employees. So Dick felt that he got so much from going to Missouri State University and they helped him so well to move along the line of business. That he wanted to give back and he gave back in a big way. We're going to go back now and talk with Kim Swanson, who is the director of the School of Accountancy and Kim. What an amazing setup that you guys have over at the university now. Yeah, so thank you for that. I really appreciate it. So I'm the director for the School of Accountancy and I also am a Kansas City native. So I found my way to Springfield about six years ago after spending some time at some larger institutions. I honestly came here for an interview and had been at schools where I was paid to do research, keep my door closed and not get to know the name of a student.

13:21And on my interview, I was walking to the union with some of the faculty, Dr. Greg Tapas, yelled out to a student at the Fountains, and asked him how potty training was going for his new puppy. I went back to my hotel, called my husband and said we're moving to Springfield, Missouri. I'm going to work with these faculty. Not only did he know the name of his student in the wild, he knew he had a puppy that he was potty training and I want to be a part of that fact. So that is why I sit in Springfield, Missouri today. That's a great story. Yeah. And so tell us about what is a county, define accounting for a layperson. I find the best way to describe accounting is to use sports analogies. So as a lifelong Kansas City native, I'm sorry if you show up in my classroom. I'm not going to talk about Kansas City chiefs a lot. So I find when you talk about accounting, what we are, we have to break down the stereotypes. We're not the bean counters of your grandparents era. We are now scorekeepers. So we're data driven decision makers. You think of us like a good coach.

14:21We want to keep the stats of the game and we want to help our team get to the Super Bowl. And please, by the way, note that the accountants for the chiefs also get Super Bowl rings. And as we're moving into championship season for the MLB, they also get to where. Very cool. That's awesome. So accountants get Super Bowl rings. So what we, when you think about keeping stats on a player. So just like the good stats of any good football player, you want to keep their stats. So like we know the stats on my homes, but we'd also want to keep the stats of Josh Mahomes and no our competitors. And at the end of the game, kind of the accounting cycle is like Andy Reed's playbook. And so we're going to mix that playbook up to get the good outcomes that we want and hopefully get to that championship. And so that's how I describe accounting. We're the scorekeepers of business. How many students are there in your department? We have about 570 students right now. 440 of those are undergraduate students. We have a pretty robust grad program. It would be large considered nationwide with our numbers.

15:22And about 40% of those graduate students are actually second career people who have found accounting later in life. Just, just curious. What is that number compared with the university up north? It would be very comparable. Obviously the College of Business is a flagship school at Missouri State. That would not necessarily be the case at Mizzou. So we're quite competitive with them, although they have differential tuition and we do not. So you get the same degree with the same accreditation, say same CPA exam passed. But you can do that at a fraction of the cost as you can up the road. That's pretty awesome. Which we love because we're like our love languages saving money. Absolutely. So before the show we're out in the lobby and there's a magazine laying there and it's a Missouri State Mag. We flip it open and right in the middle of the magazine is your pictures talking about the accounting department. So everywhere we turn around now it seems like the accounting department is getting lots of credit out in Missouri State.

16:22Outside of Missouri State, you see it in the media everywhere. So tell us about what's on the horizon for you guys right now. Anything new that we should be aware of? So we definitely, I would definitely say we're in alignment with the strategic plan to work on branding. So we've taken that personal in-house. So we have tried to kind of turn ourselves externally facing. We've done a great job with the curriculum revisions in the last five years. So now we're externally facing. So you will see our faculty and our students working outside the department. And that brings brand recognition. We're doing that not only locally but at a state and national level because I want people to see the barehead and know that's Missouri State with them and have most state on it. Well, and our plans are to bring in 30,000 students by 2030. What does your department look like? What are your goals to try to move those numbers up? Right. Obviously we know that there's a population decline. And so there's going to be a plateau in traditional enrollments. We're definitely capitalizing on those second career people where AI may be displacing them and accounting is a good fit for them.

17:23We can send them back as auditors in the industry that they came from. But we're also working in a space. I think Kyle could speak to we're beefing up and rolling out a dual credit program for high schools. And we're doing that with a couple of strategic pilot programs across the state, both school districts. Rock, lead and. And then we're going to roll that out state by. I want to expand on that just a little bit if you would. Yeah, so my idea this has kind of been a passion project for me since I started with the department. And I really just want Missouri State when when high schools are thinking about offering a dual credit program, we want Missouri State to be the university that they go to for that. Because it is such a value ad for those students are credits transfer anywhere any other school of accountancy that's an AACS B certified program takes our credits. So you get a lot of these towns or a lot of high schools that are often offering dual credit through like a smaller vocational school or a smaller two year college and then that credit doesn't always transfer.

18:27And so the students aren't quite getting the value that they're expecting, but with Missouri State. They get the value that they're expecting if they want to go to Mizzou if they want to go to LSU or somewhere like that. The credit transfers they don't have to worry about retaking that class when they get to their undergraduate program. And so that's just been a really, really. Driving project that I've worked on and it's we've seen some really, really good success with some great school districts and in Missouri. Rockwood and and blue springs up around Kansas City. And we've actually got a meeting tomorrow with the dual credit coordinator for Missouri State to talk about how we want to roll this program out to the rest of the state. Kyle, you mentioned that you had 20 years of experience elsewhere before coming to Missouri State. You are an instructor here, but I think you also are a student somewhere. Back on that? Yeah, you know, I'm a lifelong student. My wife's not always thrilled about that, but yeah, I know I'm finishing an executive program, a PhD program at Oklahoma State right now and still water.

19:35Just started my dissertation phase a couple of weeks ago, technically. So should be able to defend a proposal in April and hopefully defend my dissertation next November and finish up with that. Well, we we'll bet on you for getting all that. What are your plans after you get that high degree? Well, you know, I really want to find a tenure track position. That's that's the big plan and continue just, you know, the whole point of PhD is is not to just contribute knowledge, but to create knowledge for accounting and education. And that's kind of my plan with that is to continue research in areas of fraud and accounting and continuing to try to contribute new knowledge to those places. I'm here in the nice spent four years trying to get PhD degrees for Missouri State University. So that some students wouldn't have to go to Oklahoma State or somewhere else for a PhD degree. Now I understand PhD degrees may cost a lot of money, but we have a few years ahead of us.

20:46Every state is growing in every respect, not only on the football field, not only in athletics, but in academia also. So someday, probably hopefully before I pass on, we will have PhDs in in several fields at Missouri State. Yeah, we didn't just try. We got it done over there. So I'm so proud that that's happened. It's just a matter of rolling it out now and getting the various departments to determine where we're going to start with these PhDs. And hopefully soon, hopefully within the next year or so, a decision has been made on the first one and we continue to roll from there. Very good. And I'll tell you that's just such great progress and a tip of the hat to both you guys for working on that everyone that served on your committee and whatnot. It does as our football coach says, Tom, it takes all of us. And we are excited to have the School of Accountancy over here talking about all that they do. If you think that all accountants do as tax returns, you are really mistaken. They are the backbone of a lot of businesses out there.

21:54You're going to learn more about exactly why that's the case as we take a break right here at Sidelines, Missouri State. We'll be right back. That's what your group's right? That is one of my audience. Who we got there? That's hypermines out of East LA. Hypermines and you represent them? Well, they're on my record label and they're doing really well right now. I've only had them on my roster for a month and they're already in rotation on two serious XM satellite stations that picked them up already. And they last week came at number seven on the global top 100 on the Indy charts. Congratulations. That's awesome. Well, we had mentioned in previous episodes here this morning or any of this afternoon that we have a football game tonight and we're excited as we can be about that.

22:56It's a home opener from Missouri State. So if you don't have tickets, you can still get them. But I'll tell you there's going to be a big crowd there. There's going to be a lot of support. And we hope that we can see you there. But it's not just football season. Is it there? No, it's soccer season two, especially on the men's side because it's very important. We mentioned this because Missouri State just got ranked 19 in the country. And this is the first we didn't make it last year. But ever since then, we've been in the top 25 for like the last 10 years or so. And I'll tell you, as a soccer fan, I do watch this team and they are really, really good. And they've got all the ingredients to make a deep run this year. And as we've always discussed, you know, who are the two teams that can potentially win a national championship from Missouri State that has a really high ceiling and my vote on that would be both baseball and men's soccer. And I think both of them, I mean, baseball as well, got a nod this year is expected to go to the college world series already. So I mean, it's we've got two really stellar programs that are worth mentioning.

24:02You know, a lot of people think that probably the soccer team must be in conference USA as well, but they're not are they? No, they're in the American. So they're playing much bigger competition. When the American lost a member, when they lost SMU, when SMU went to the ACC, the American reached out to the men because they had such a good track record. It was a real state and invited them to join the American. So much, much different competition there. But so far, we're the only ones ranked out of the AAC. Wow. So yeah, we're holding our own just fine. That is a huge move. Oh, go ahead. How many games have we lost? Well, we haven't lost any yet. Well, and we played, I know we played Penn State, didn't we? We beat Penn State 3 to 1, yep. 3 to 1. That's that's a that's a wampin. Yeah, when it comes to when it comes to soccer. Absolutely. Yeah. So that they're doing very well. So I wanted to make sure we mentioned that. So back to the program here. Jared, I want to I want to ask you what what does Missouri State homecoming and Jared know back having common.

25:06Yeah, so that is a great question. So actually this year, I do get the honor to serve as the homecoming coach here for Missouri State homecoming. The theme this year is bear cello, which is basically like a spin on Coachella where like teams kind of choose a theme of like a musical artist represent their team. So homecoming has been a very fun way to kind of interact with alumni and students because it's a plan a lot of a fun events for students like we do rock star most like we get to plan the parade. I'm going to do another bunch of other fun things like that. Something really cool that I really enjoy about homecoming is that you wouldn't really necessarily think that an accounting student would usually be the face of directing one of the largest student ran events at Missouri State. So that's something that I've really got kind of to take a lot of pride in as an accounting student to represent the Pendleton Family School of Accounts. You so well in this area because like we talked about and touched upon that a bunch of one of the things about accounting is that every sort of organization or business needs an accountant. And there's a lot of budgeting and a lot of management that goes into homecoming. So it's not something that I've taken very lightly and I've really got to enjoy kind of being the lead on this year.

26:14You know it's amazing to me. Accounts are everywhere on campus and Darren was talking about our soccer team. Isn't there a soccer student who's a student there in accounting. Tell us about him. Yes. So we just had Riley he men. She just went to Iowa State. The buckeyes that what they are. Yes, she went to Iowa. She went to Iowa. So she is doing her master's program there. But she was one of our student leaders and the athletics program there. And Dr. Church with regard to the enrollment there you mentioned it. We know that all higher education schools are feeling the stress because there are fewer students now to go to these universities. How is the school of accountancy holding up as far as its student enrollment? We've been very lucky. So for the last four years we've had double digit enrollment growth. We did plateau this year.

27:18But when many programs are declining with the 2007 basically baby cliff that we knew we were going to get hit with next that I think a plateau is really is a good stopping point. And we would be to not emerge any more students now after we kind of re claim our enrollment after the pandemic. We certainly leverage Missouri State is very well known for being experiential learning, which is not necessarily the case at every university because you have to keep your class sizes reasonable to give students an opportunity to get their hands on things. And we have a faculty that are committed to staying abreast of emerging technologies. So now we have AI infused from the first class that Kyle teaches all the way to the last class that I teach. So we're we stay profession relevant and we ensure and spiritual learning in our classrooms. Thanks to Judy breeding who donated a computer lab to us a couple of years ago. And Judy very well very very impressive lady. How do you let's take a student who gets a bachelor's degree not a master's is that person ready to go out and be an accountant for best pro or Riley auto parts or anything.

28:33So in our program we prepare we are a certified profession. So when you meet an accountant they typically have three initials behind their name. We don't get super right up with what initials they put behind their name but they we do want them to be competitive. We prepare students for seven different certifications. Most of those can be achieved with a bachelor's degree which prepare you to go out and work in fields like governmental nonprofit fraud examination for the state. And then we're going to be providing for a company like fast pro most students that want to go ahead and achieve the CPA exam go ahead and stay for the master's degree to get that advanced coursework that they need to successfully pass. But you certainly are prepared for it to be to launch a career in accounting after your bachelor's. How many what's a percentage of students who are able to find a job right out of a college with a bachelor's degree. We're grateful to our many employer stakeholders that are not just here in Springfield but also Kansas City and St. Louis and then we send people we cast a wide net even beyond that.

29:33We just had a student leave for Washington DC. We typically have a placement rate so far we're still above 95%. Wow. That everyone has an accountant. Very very impressive. Yeah. How well known is our accounting department within the state as it relates to students. I mean, what would what what would cause a student to choose Missouri State University School of Accounting over the school up north or other like programs in St. Louis or Kansas City. I would say it's the effort of the faculty we have getting out in the community now because we've been able to externally face our program. We have faculty that are involved with the CPA exam. So they see that we're involved nationally and not only creating the CPA exam but we're also involved legislatively in Jeff City on crafting what the new CPA laws are. So they see our name both state and nationally and that brings recognition to us through the external things that are faculty participating in. We have one of the top five recommendations for intro accounting.

30:37We just published a paper on that the faculty that teach at that level just published a paper and those faculty are now speaking nationally on what we're doing here at Missouri State. Parents hear that guidance counselors hear that. So even if a student hasn't heard of us, they're pushes positioning them towards us. So you know, when you take a look at what you've done and the exposure that you've had with different businesses and the opportunity you've had to make connections with business people in the area. In our fourth segment, we're going to want to get into a lot of that and Kyle, we've got several questions that we'd like to address with you as well. As we take a look at what the School of Accountancy has, once again, if you have the impression that accountants just do tax returns, you are far from the truth there. Because the accountants play such an important role in the business as advisors. They are the backbone to make sure that you stay financially strong and able to continue the growth that perhaps that you're trying to achieve. So if you need students or something along that line, get a hold of Missouri State.

31:39And if they were to try to do that, Kim, how would they get in contact with you on our email address as a countancy at Missouri State.edu. Very good. We appreciate you sharing that. Speaking of sharing, I forgot to mention that we're missing one of our hosts today. We were missing our Kirk Umpquist, who's the cornerstone for us here. And he's also a cornerstone for the Branson District of Tourism, where he serves as the executive director. Trying to think if there's a better person that might be good for promotion other than Kirk Umpquist. I can't think of anybody. I don't know where he is today, but where do we hear, whatever he's doing, he's doing good. I could promise you that. He's out making waves doing something. Someone saying yes, aren't they? Someone out there saying yes. That's a good one. That's a good one. And by the way, if you're like, well, who is this guy talking? My name's Dennis Heim. I'm one of the four guys here that are honored to really support and promote Missouri State and everything that's going on over there. We've talked about soccer. We've talked about the football game later today. Seriously. Get to the game, go and enjoy the festivities.

32:41The home opener tonight is just going to be an absolute blast. And we are having a blast here at Sidelines, Missouri State, where we support everything that goes on at that university. And we'll be back right after this. Welcome back to Sidelines, Missouri State, and this musical interlude brought to you by the, what do you call it, record label of Darren Hamley? DC Jam Records. I love it. DC. DC Jam. Jam Records. Very good. You've got a couple of live ones on the hook. It sounds like based on this music. Congratulations to you on that. So we have the School of Accountancy for over at Missouri State here. And we're excited to have them here. And Tom, I think we're going to you for the next question. All right. Dr. Kim. In my law firm, we will have someone who is a law student.

33:45And when school is out in the spring, they will work for us in the summer so we can evaluate them whether we want them in the firm after they become a lawyer. Have anything similar to that in the accounting school? Yes. We accounting has about a 500 year tradition of being an apprenticeship model. So formal internships are just part of that part of our industry. We not only do internships in the summer, as you can imagine, April 15th is our Super Bowl. And so we do a lot of spring tax internships also. So our students not only perform internships and work experiences in the summer, they can seek your round employment and internship opportunities in a variety of industries. Oh, that's outstanding. Where do our students come from? You know, that we we have a very diverse student body. You've noticed that Jared and I are from Kansas City. Kyle is from here in Springfield. We have students. I would say we have about 40% from Southern Missouri, probably 25, 30% from the St. Louis area.

34:51You tell me if you're in agreement with your friends. Probably a smaller group. I think it's a small percent from Kansas City, but we're gaining traction in that area. And then remember, we get to benefit from some of the decisions that Arkansas and Texas are making. So we get a lot of students from those areas because they're not making greatest enrollment decisions with their universities, including Texas A&M. Well, there you go. And when you told us where the students come from, where do they go when they graduate? Do they just some of them go out of this area? Definitely. Who tries to recruit accountant students? Companies from other states, for example? Most definitely. So our biggest employer segment would certainly be public accounting because that's obviously what they're hiring as accountants. So our probably our biggest sector would be about 60% public accounting. Those can be local firms. We have a lot of local partnerships. They can be regional firms or they can be national international firms.

35:53And so our students when they make connections with the employers here, like at the career fair next week, they can indicate to those recruiters that they want to be outside of Missouri. And they can put them in contact in DC Chicago. Dallas Houston. So Carla, want to shift gears with you for a moment if we can. So how does the school of accountancy interact with the student athletes and the student leaders on campus? Yeah. So as far as student athletes go, man, we have a we have a ball with our student athletes. We've talked a lot about football, soccer, but I've definitely got to give a shout out to our swim and dive students as well. Absolutely. We've got some terrific. That's tremendous. I got a call EV out by name. EV calls amazing. She's one of our swim and dive people. She's been a great student for years and is moving on to bigger, brighter things outside of Springfield when she graduates. Swimming dive students are terrific baseball students terrific. We get so many baseball students are hockey.

36:55We got a hockey club. We get hockey students. They're all great. And the thing that we love about. The school of account see the penultimate family school of account see is the faculty so involved with the students. So it's not strange or weird for us to show up. I've brought my family to swim meets. I've brought my family to baseball games and we show up as a group to hockey, hockey games, things like that. And so we really celebrate those students because they do. There is that extra bit of work that they're putting in and we try to celebrate them and show them how much we appreciate them as often as we can and support them. That's really great. So if I give each one of you a 30 second commercial here to tell us to tell all the students who are listening right now. The parents of students who are listening right now. Why they should put and roll at Missouri State University in the accounting department. Can you can you give me an answer on that? Sure. I mean the easiest answer is do you like job like that's that's the best answer I can give you.

38:00Right. If you want a job if you want job security accounting is absolutely the way to go. As Kim mentioned we've got an over 95% placement rate. I dare you to find outside of like the. The nursing school or something like that there's probably not many other schools that that's a very good statistic can tout that. And it's something that you're going to have a job a job security with it's it's why I picked accounting I tell them all the time it wasn't because it was fun I didn't have a blast doing consolidation worksheets and stuff like that but I knew I could find a job I was never going to go without a job and it pays well to it pays pretty good because you do okay to piggyback on that what role do internships play with those stats do you think. Internships are incredibly important but again the way the hiring is going right now if you want an internship you've probably got an internship.

39:01But they play a big role being able to know what you're interested in whether the whether you fit with the firms culture or the entities culture whether that culture whether that entity fits with what you expect out of an employer those are all very important things that you've got to figure out and it's best to figure those out while you're going to work. And I think I just heard you say that you've got more jobs than you do students to fill them currently and you need more students to fill that demand is that correct. Yeah I would say that's absolutely correct I mean one of my goals when I first started teaching our professionalism course which I can talk about for an hour I think it's one of the most important courses we teach was that I wanted to have so many students that Kim had to create a job that I wanted to fill that. And then I had to create new sections of that class and we've done that and not only did we have to create new sections we had to bring in an additional faculty member to teach extra sections of it so the more the barrier if you're even thinking about it if you're on the fence come come talk to us we're happy to have you in the school.

40:07And how do they get hold of you. And it feels easy it's just Kyle good at Missouri State.edu and I will always talk to a student about a career in accounting or you can just email account and see at Missouri State.edu and somebody will get back with you on it. I'm impressed by the number of times during this program that we've talked about athletics we have homecoming person here as a student and I just wonder how important. A few years ago well for several years there was a great debate in our university do we want to go FBS football division one the highest level being on the biggest stage with Ohio State and Texas and him and others. And it was a big decision financially it was ultimately determined that in the long run we would benefit at least we would come out even financially if we went to the big stage and I think I would like your opinion how does that step up in the athletic field impact not only in

41:25enrollment of the university but enrollment here at your at your school of account. Well I think any of us that are academics have been to other campuses bigger with big athletic programs specially football you know you go to the still water campus for Oklahoma State I mean it's been picking stadiums nicer than arrowhead it's crazy it's bigger it's nicer somewhere like Kansas State or Kansas or M.U. right. And what's the enrollment at Oklahoma State it's about the same they're about 25 26000. Same sizes we are but they have a stadium that's better than arrowhead. The difference is once you get the students behind it once you get the local community behind it it is such a huge benefit and such a revenue driver for the entire school that it benefits everybody it doesn't just benefit the athletics program right on the head that's right it benefits the entire university and so I think if Missouri State and and and if President Biff

42:30if they keep pressing this and keep marketing the athletics and really get the students in the community behind it I think it can do absolutely wonderful things for the university. Yeah and I feel in our community a new excitement about our university in all phases of it and in these programs that we've had sidelines Missouri State I have learned so much from professors from department heads from deans from people who explore the Amazon what we are doing at this university it is absolutely amazing what we're doing for our school. Our school for our students statewide national wide it is it is just a wonderful university very good appreciate those words towards the university that we all love and if you're out there and you're wanting to springboard from high school or a different job and you need a springboard to get you there Missouri State must to play that role for you and the school of accountancy has the opportunity to put you in any kind of industry you might like everyone needs account.

43:41Everyone needs accountants as they've been telling us and it's important not to lose sight of that and they'll get you a job afterwards just Google Missouri State accountancy and you'll find out we are out of time we'll be back again next week see you then.