14 minute read
In Touch | president & CEO’s message
Many Ways to Give Back to Your Profession
By Tammy J. Hofstede
With year-end approaching and a new year waiting in the wings, I wanted to remind you of the opportunities members have that can impact students and educators in Wisconsin and help populate the CPA pipeline in the process. The WICPA Educational Foundation plays a pivotal role in supporting programs to improve awareness and perceptions by educating Wisconsin students and educators about the exciting opportunities available in the accounting profession. Many members are unaware of the number and variety of activities the Educational Foundation supports, so I am describing some of them here. More activities are described at www.wicpa.org/give/ foundation, and you can contact me directly (tammy@wicpa.org) for additional information.
Accounting Career Awareness Grants: Each year, more than $50,000 in Accounting Career Awareness Grants are awarded by the Educational Foundation to Wisconsin teachers who attend the Educator Accounting Symposium and create programs, projects and curriculum to promote accounting as a career.
Accounting Program for Building the Profession (APBP):
The Educational Foundation supports the APBP training for Wisconsin teachers to encourage and assist with providing a high-quality accounting curriculum for students.
College Scholarships: Each year, the Educational Foundation awards college scholarships to qualified accounting students who are working toward the 150-hour requirement needed to receive their CPA license.
College Speaking Engagements: WICPA members share their experience with college students about accounting career opportunities and their own career paths at college career fairs, CPA panel discussions, accounting club and class presentations and other events at two- and four-year colleges throughout the state.
CPA2b Student Magazine: The biannual CPA2b provides information on accounting careers, the CPA Exam and issues facing the CPA profession. More than 3,000 copies are circulated on college campuses and to high school educators each fall and spring. If you would like to write an article for CPA2b, contact the editor at mtzinzow@icloud.com. Members can gain CPE credit for the time they spend writing articles.
DECA & FBLA: DECA and FBLA are professional business organizations that prepare high school students for careers in business. The Educational Foundation sponsors an informational booth for students at the annual state competitions in the spring, and members also participate in judging the competitions.
Educator Accounting Symposium: Firsthand information from accounting professionals is provided to educators at the annual Educator Accounting Symposium, where they receive curriculum ideas, tools to better serve their students and the opportunity to apply for an Accounting Careers Awareness Grant.
High School Speaking Engagements: Through the High School Speaking Program, WICPA members promote the accounting profession by making presentations about their careers and various opportunities in the accounting profession. The WICPA can help you find a speaking opportunity in your locale.
Junior Achievement BizTown & Finance Park: BizTown, held at Junior Achievement’s Kohl’s Education Center in Milwaukee, takes elementary school students into the world of business. During their day at Junior Achievement’s BizTown, students learn what it takes to create and run a business, as well as how to manage money. Junior Achievement’s Finance Park combines in-class learning with a day-long visit to a fully interactive, simulated town where students in grades 8–12 are introduced to personal finance and career exploration.
Junior Achievement Career Days: Students from grades 7–12 are given the opportunity to interact with professionals from a variety of careers, including accounting, at their schools. Students learn about career paths, personal stories, educational decisions and how to apply skills learned in in the classroom to the world of work.
New CPA Banquet: Each year, the Educational Foundation sponsors the New CPA Banquet, which honors newly licensed CPAs and celebrates their hard work, dedication and the achievement of earning the CPA designation.
Reading Makes Cents & The Big Read: In conjunction with National Financial Literacy Month and Money Smart Week, the Foundation helps fund the cost of money-themed books for statewide financial literacy events for children in pre-K through grade 4 and also provides these books to WICPA members to take to their children’s classrooms.
SecureFutures: Formerly known as “Make a Difference – Wisconsin,” SecureFutures is a program in which WICPA members can share their expertise and make positive connections with high school students while teaching them financial literacy skills and empowering them to make sound financial decisions.
Students & Leaders Network: This program provides live web conferencing and digitally stored interactive video discussions on topics that provide insight on accounting careers. With this program, WICPA members can reach high school classrooms across the state with one recorded presentation.
Wisconsin Educators of Business & Information
Technology: WEBIT is an annual state convention for high school business teachers. The Educational Foundation sponsors an informational booth with accounting resources for educators. WICPA members also present an accounting session for educators.
Young Entrepreneurial Scholars (YES): The YES program is a collaboration between the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) – Milwaukee Chapter, the WICPA and the pre-college divisions of UW-Oshkosh and UWMilwaukee. YES gives qualified minority high school students a career-enhancing experience through exposure to accounting and other business professions during a six-week internship. The opportunities YES offers can help more minorities to become CPAs and increase diversity, inclusion and equity in the profession. Now is the time to make your tax-deductible contribution or sign up for activities to participate in during the coming year. You can help make a real difference in our common goal of promoting the profession and helping populate the CPA pipeline. Whether you make a contribution of time or treasure, you are giving back to your profession in a meaningful way. And the rewards are immeasurable.
Tammy J. Hofstede is president & CEO of the WICPA. Contact her at 262-785-0445 ext. 4518 or tammy@wicpa.org.
YOU have the opportunity to impact thousands of students and educators in Wisconsin.
Through your contribution to the WICPA Educational Foundation, you can help us reach students and educators in high school and college to create awareness about the accounting profession.
As the end of 2021 draws near and you are thinking about tax planning, consider donating to the WICPA Educational Foundation.
Questions? Contact Tammy J. Hofstede, WICPA President and CEO at tammy@wicpa.org.
To contribute, visit wicpa.org/EF.
NoFlair
forAccounting
By Marcia Tillett-Zinzow
Harold C. (“Hal”) Trescott, CPA, was told by his first accounting professor that he’d never make it as an accountant. Yet he went on to graduate from the University of Wisconsin School of Business with Senior Honors and a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree in accounting — 27th in a class of 311 students in the business school. “My life has been an interesting series of events,” he said. Trescott graduated from Horicon High School in 1956 and began his college studies that fall as a pre-law student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After his first year there, he realized he would have to go to work to earn the money needed to finish college. His father had passed away during Trescott’s sophomore year in high school, so the family was unable to help with tuition, and there were no student loan programs at that time. If he wanted an education, he would have to get a job. As it turned out, he had quite a few. “The first year and a half, I worked at a Clark Oil & Refining gas station along Highway 41 just south of Fond du Lac,” he said. Later, he would also work for a restaurant in Madison, canning factories in Lomira and Rosendale, a Volkswagen parts department in Fond du Lac, an interior decorating business in Fond du Lac, a teacher’s assistant in Oshkosh and the Department of Natural Resources in Madison. He also spent some time working for the United States government. “In those days, the Selective Service System maintained a military draft. Since I was going to have to go into the military sooner or later, I decided to make it sooner,” he said. “I signed up with the Wisconsin National Guard for six months of active duty at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and five and a half years of reserve duty to follow.”
Defying fate
After his six months in Missouri, Trescott had enough money to return to school. Since he was living in Fond du Lac by that time, he decided to commute to Oshkosh State College for his sophomore year. It was 1959, and Oshkosh was not yet a part of the UW system. It also did not yet have an accounting program. “The school had only 2,000 students,” Trescott recalled. “At the rate I was going, it was going to take me forever to graduate from college — so I switched my major to business and planned to return to Madison for my junior year,” he said. Accounting was required to get into business school, so Trescott enrolled in Beginning Accounting, taught by a former attorney from New York state. The professor felt he had too many students in the class; so, in an effort to make the class more manageable, he gave a particularly tough exam in the beginning of the semester, hoping to weed out half the students. Trescott, along with numerous others, failed the exam and was told to drop the course — but he refused. “I told the professor I had to have accounting to get into the School of Business at Madison, and he said, ‘You’ll never make it. You have no flair for accounting.’ I told him I wasn’t going to quit,” Trescott said. Determined to succeed, he bought a second textbook and studied every topic in both texts for the rest of the semester. He ended up with an A in Beginning Accounting, worked for his professor part time and got another A in Intermediate Accounting. “I liked accounting so much that I decided that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he said.
Standing 400 feet tall, the U.S. flag Trescott stands in front of is a signature of Acuity's headquarters. You can see the Acuity Flag, which is considered to be America's largest free-flying flag, from I-43 near Sheboygan.
Off he went to UW-Madison School of Business as a junior, hoping to major in accounting. Because he had transferred in from Oshkosh, he was required to get an A or B in Advanced Accounting to become an accounting major. Trescott aced the course. He subsequently became active in Beta Alpha Psi and was doing quite well. But fate intervened once more and forced him out of school again.
Completing goals
“In the second week of my senior year at Madison, I was recalled as a reservist into the U.S. Army,” Trescott said. “I was one of about 150,000 men who were placed on active duty when the Communists built the Berlin Wall.” After a year of active duty at Fort Lewis, Washington, Trescott returned to UW–Madison to finally finish his education. With all the interruptions, it took seven years to complete. But in 1963, he earned his BBA in accounting and graduated with Senior Honors. “Only a couple of accounting students got that,” he noted. After graduation, he went to work for Arthur Young in Milwaukee as a junior accountant in audit. “Those were the days of the Big Eight accounting firms, but the Milwaukee office was small,” Trescott said. “We only had about 22 employees.” Arthur Young would later merge with Fontaine & McCurdy and ultimately with Ernst and Ernst, becoming Ernst & Young, the Big Four firm we know today. “When I went to work for Arthur Young, they had a two-week training class for young accountants in Lake Forest [Illinois]. People came from all over the Midwest for it,” Trescott explained. “Everybody had all the questions answered beforehand. They had worked on it for months and months — but nobody in the firm had told me you were supposed to have it done beforehand, so I did terribly! They ranked people, and because I did so badly, I was ranked near the bottom. My firm said, ‘Who is this guy? We thought he was pretty good, but he did terrible in Lake Forest!’ They thought I’d never make it, but then I passed the CPA Exam in one sitting. They couldn’t understand how someone who did so poorly at Lake Forest could do that.” Trescott descended from a family of small business owners: farmers, dress shop owners, jewelers, radio shop owners and the like. So when he decided to leave Arthur Young — after getting married — and strike out in a new direction, he went to work for a small CPA firm in Sheboygan. “We discussed my having a financial interest in the firm in the near future, but that never happened,” he said.
Answering when opportunity knocks
In 1966, he answered a Wall Street Journal ad for a director of accounting and statistics position at Heritage Mutual Insurance Co. in Sheboygan. He got the job. “I took over the accounting and finance function at the age of 27,” Trescott said. “The company was small, and I did it all: tax returns, financial statements, some of what today would be termed actuarial work, balancing the bank accounts, budgets, reinsurance analysis — a wide variety of tasks. It was just me and two other, noncollege-trained employees.” At that time, the company had fewer than 100 employees and had a net worth of $1 million. Today, it’s known as Acuity Insurance — the name was changed in 2001 —and its net worth is $3.1 billion. The company has more than 1,200 employees
locally and another 200 in other states, according to Trescott. He has watched it grow and been part of its success for the last 56 years — most recently as a member of the board of directors. “When I joined a small, little-known company in Sheboygan, some of my accounting friends asked me what I was doing. ‘That company will never go anywhere,’ they said. It would not survive in the world, as they saw it,” Trescott recalled. “Since then, the large companies they were with have gone out of business, and Acuity marches forward. It is a well-known, important employer in Wisconsin and a major contributor to local charitable causes,” he said. Trescott retired in 2004 from his final post as senior vice president – finance and a few years later became a consultant to the board of directors Audit Committee. In 2010, he was appointed as a member of the board of directors and currently serves on three board committees, including Audit. Trescott pointed out that it’s unusual for someone to spend that many years with a company and then spend more years with the company on the board. “Nobody does that. I’m 83!” he exclaimed. Then he smiled, “It’s been a real adventure for a guy with no flair for accounting.”
Marcia Tillett-Zinzow is a Wisconsin freelance writer and editor. Contact her at mtzinzow@icloud.com.
Photo provided by Acuity Insurance
A 65-foot Ferris wheel is one of the perks Acuity employees can share with their families. Trescott poses with it on the cover of this issue.
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