Gustavus Wins Deloitte Accounting Competition

For the third time in the five-year history of the contest, a team of Gustavus Adolphus College students won the Deloitte Audit Case Competition. Deloitte is one of the “big four” public accounting firms and is the world’s largest professional services network based on revenue and number of employees.

The team of Gustie accounting students‒made up of sophomores Brandon Holland and Catherine LaCasse and juniors Logan Ries and Max Ullan‒started preparing weeks in advance, studying the case provided to them by Deloitte. 

“Because the case we were given was an authentic audit case that Deloitte had worked on in the past, I got an extremely realistic taste of what an audit career could look like,” LaCasse said.

The team competed against students from Concordia College-Moorhead, Bethel University, Luther College, and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

“The competition provided something that is almost impossible to experience in the classroom. A lot of the time in the classroom is spent laying down an accounting foundation of sorts. The Deloitte Competition showed me how to use this foundation to dive further into more complex accounting issues,” LaCasse said.

The students were led by faculty advisers and accounting professors Artur Pietka, Lonnie Hosman, and Laura Bowyer. 

“For students it is a great opportunity to apply their skills in a real-world environment and build professional relationships outside of campus. Each year, as a result of excellent performance, our students receive job offers and some of them join Deloitte after graduation,” Pietka said.

LaCasse is thankful for the opportunity to compete in Deloitte’s competition.

“We showed that we knew the case inside and out,” LaCasse said. “I personally think we won because we were so well prepared and our personalities made a great team.”

The mission of the Gustavus Department of Economics and Management is to equip students to identify, analyze, and solve complex problems through excellent, liberal arts education and experiential learning, which enables students to become ethical and entrepreneurial leaders.