ESU XBRL Team wins 6th Global XBRL Academic Competition

ESU competed globally with other universities such as Hong Kong, UK, Europe and Germany; only American team to win

Team members include: (l to r) Veli Viinanen, Natalie Standing, Allen Walker, Janelle Shoup, and Andrew Vincent. Advisors (l to r) Dr. William Remington, Dr. Zane Swanson and Dr. George Durler.

An Emporia State University student team has once again proved that they are the cream of the crop and are some of the top students in nation.

The ESU XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) Academic Competition team won the 6th Global XBRL Academic Competition sponsored by Bryant University in Rhode Island.

"I was excited to find out about our victory,” said Andrew Vincent, team member and MBA student from Leavenworth. “I was relieved that our hard work and long hours had paid off. This is a huge honor for ESU and the School of Business. It’s not everyday that a team wins an international competition.”

Team members include Veli Viinanen, a MBA student from Vantaa, Finland; Janelle Shoup an accounting major from Burlington; Allen Walker, an MBA student from Emporia; Natalie Standing, a MBA student from Wichita; and Vincent.

"It was very interesting and exciting to work with this project and new technology,” said Viinanen. “The victory was like a cherry on top of a cake.”

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a technology for improving access to the information in financial reports. This year’s winning team presented a project using XBRL to do Continuous Auditing. The XBRL team competes internationally through projects involving the eXtensible Business Reporting Language. ESU beat out teams from Hong Kong, Germany, Europe and the United Kingdom and was the only American team to win at the competition.

“This speaks to the quality and caliber of students that we have at ESU. Our students have worked extremely hard and are most deserving of this prestigious award,” said Robert Hite, School of Business Dean.

The team has been invited to attend a global international conference this fall where they will present their project to international business leaders.

“The ESU student team created a software application to audit XBRL data in which users can create rules and filters to identify transactions for investigation," said Dr. Zane Swanson, associate professor of accounting and team advisor. “In general, what bar codes have done for retail packaging, XBRL will do for accounting.”

This year’s team advisors are Swanson, William Remington, associate professor of information systems; and George Durler, assistant professor of accounting.

"I am very pleased with the significant accomplishment of our School of Business student team which won the 6th Global XBRL Competition.  This is a world-wide competition and previous winners have often been international universities,” Hite said. “What was particularly striking about this activity is the initiative that the students demonstrated from start to finish.  Speaking for the faculty of the School of Business, I am proud of the way this academic team represented our School and University."

ESU has entered one or more teams in each of the previous XBRL competitions and achieved honorable mention.

Last Updated July 2, 2007>