Former student speaks to 7th & 8th graders

On Tuesday & Wednesday (Dec 21-22), Mr. Kyle Loux visited with my 7th & 8th grades classes about careers and specifically engineering. Mr. Loux graduated from Alburnett two years ago and is currently attending Purdue University studying Computer Engineering. Mr. Loux spent about 45 minutes with each class discussing many topics and answering student questions. Zach Prucha, an 8th grader, commented, "There are a lot more options for engineers and types of engineers than I thought." Another 8th grader, Tony McFarlin commented, "Engineering is in pretty much everything." Anna Possehl stated, "You have to take Physics to be a successful engineer." A question that a student asked was, "Did you take hare classes your senior year or easy classes?" Mr. Loux responded by challenging the students to be conintually challengin themselves with hard classes and learning everything possible in high school as that will help in the transition to college. An interesting statistic Mr. Loux discussed is that, it is estimated 50% of the current engineers in the U.S. will be retirement age in approximately 10 years. This will created a lot of opportunities for current high school students to focus on finding a good career in engineering. Thank you Mr. Loux, the students were engaged and had great questions!

Virtual Team Challenge Results are in!

Alburnett team 3 placed first in Iowa and 61st nationally in the Deloitte Virtual Team Challenge competition out of over 2,500 teams from all 50 states. Read more below.

Alburnett Accounting students participated in the Deloitte Virtual Team Challenge. The students were put in teams of 3-4. The teams of students were a consulting company that had to research and hire employees to help the virtual city of New City clean-up an oil spill. Each student was assigned a role as part of the consulting company including: hiring emergency services & logistics, hiring the public relations firm, hiring the legal & compliance issues, and hiring the recovery & disposal vendors. The students received information from the mayor and had to visit different stores and vendors to research employees to hire. Each team member had to hire an employee for each of the three tasks. The three tasks were; task 1-Business, task 2-Ethics, and task 3-Decision-making. Part of the hiring process was negotiating, Mr Kuhlers' students quickly found out that negotiating could cause the cost to go up or down. The goal of the simulation was for students to learn more about business and accounting. This was a national competition where the students' decisions raised money for the virtual United Way. Deloitte had over 2,500 high school teams competing online from all 50 states. Alburnett had 6 teams, with team 3 raising the most money of any Iowa team at $169,430 and ranked 61st overall nationally. The winning team raised $241,170 and was from Boone High School in Orlando, FL. The Alburnett teams are listed below:

Team 1; Alex German, Kylee Pyle & Jill Sadler raised $151,293
Team 2; Clint Francois, Kayla Hanson & Jordan Neighbor raised $164,800
Team 3; Mikayla Hand, Mitch Harger, Tonya Saddoris & Alex Stepanek raised $169,430
Team 4; Grant Henderson, Zach Lawrence, Alex Rickels & Kelsey Saddoris raised $117,700
Team 5; Zach Hoyle, Dalton Kramme, Garrett Running-Hawk & Colton Shadden raised $108,550
Team 6; Hiedi Dickerson, Taylor Matus & Briann Wieland raise $98,427

Overall this was a good, interactive simulation that gave our students a chance to experience a new aspect of Accounting (consulting). We are planning on participating again next semester.