With Eighth Program, COAP Reaches Farther Than Ever

The Mid-Hudson Chapter is the latest of the Society’s 17 chapters to help launch a Career Opportunities in the Accounting Profession (COAP) program. Dutchess Community College, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will host a five-day program for the first time, in June.

After hearing a presentation about COAP at the Mid-Hudson Chapter Officers Visitation, Society member and Dutchess accounting Professor Deborah Most joined Mid-Hudson President Mark M. Levy in starting a program in their area.

“We hope to have 25 or 30 students sign up for our COAP program,” Most said. “And then only time will tell whether it encourages them to enter the accounting profession.”

The New York State Society of CPAs already sponsors successful COAP programs at seven other colleges and universities across the state. The summer programs, some residential, some commuter, are designed to attract promising minority high school juniors into the accounting profession. By attending courses on a college campus and meeting with CPAs and current college accounting majors, high school students get an invaluable glimpse into college life and what being an accounting major might entail. And by visiting accounting firms or government agencies, they are encouraged to look beyond school to the possibility of a professional career.

As the spring approaches, the Society’s COAP Committee will promote the new Mid-Hudson program to high schools in the Hudson Valley region. While still in the initial planning stages, Most said she participated in a brainstorming conference call with COAP contacts at Westchester Community College, which has run a program since 2002.

The Mid-Hudson program received full funding of $3,000 from Dutchess Community College, and was designated as the college’s 2004 recipient of the C.B. Schmidt Mini-Grant Award as a project that reaches out to underserved groups in the community.

To offset the costs associated with conducting the COAP program, the Society raised almost $90,000 in 2004 through ads run in a commemorative journal for its 108th Annual Election Meeting and Dinner. The COAP Committee has set a goal of raising at least $100,000 in 2005, a year it will reach out to more potential CPAs than ever before.