Deadline: Monday, February 22, 2016

The student manuscript competition is open to undergraduate and masters of accountancy students at any Ohio university or college. Plaques and cash prizes will be awarded to the winners at Friday’s award banquet during the 2016 Ohio Region AAA meeting. Winners are encouraged to attend the dinner as guests of the Ohio Region AAA.

Eligibility:

• Undergraduate: open to all full-time undergraduate students majoring in accounting at an Ohio institution.
• Graduate (Masters): open to all full or part-time masters students in a graduate business program at an Ohio institution. Graduate students who are enrolled in a doctoral program are not eligible.

Prizes:

• For the undergraduate and graduate (Masters) categories, the first and second place winners will receive a plaque and cash awards of $500 for first place and $250 for second place.

Objectives:

• Undergraduate Category: To encourage undergraduate accounting majors to engage in reading that goes "beyond the textbook," to critically examine an issue, and to develop their writing skills.
• Graduate (Masters) Category: To encourage research in some "frontier" area of accounting, where students are encouraged to form their own conclusions and to defend them.

Topic:

• Any topic related to accounting is acceptable. Given the broad topic area, the manuscript should provide sufficient motivation to convince the reader that the topic is of importance to the broader accounting community.

Evaluation Criteria:

All papers will be blind reviewed and ranked on the following criteria:

• Content: The significance of the issue(s) covered, the strength of defense for selecting the issue(s), the strength of analysis, and the merits of recommendations. (65 points)
• Style: The organization, clarity or writing, grammatical accuracy, and technical aspects of the manuscript. (35 points)

Format: Papers should be double-spaced, with standard margins, using Times New Roman (or equivalent) 11-point typeface with full justification.

• The title of the manuscript should appear on the first page of the text without the author's name or university.
• Papers should be no longer than 10 pages for the undergraduate category and no longer than 20 pages for the graduate category, not including footnotes and references (unless the footnotes are placed at the bottom of each page).

Cover Page: Each submitted manuscript must have a cover page that includes:

• The title of the manuscript
• The author's name, university, mailing address, e-mail address and telephone number (coauthored papers will not be accepted).
• The name of the faculty sponsor (each faculty member may only sponsor a maximum of three papers in any one of the above categories).

Submission:

• The manuscript should be sent as an email attachment (in PDF format) by the sponsoring faculty member to Dr. Heidi Meier no later than 11:59 pm EST February 22, 2016.