During July and August, the Institute’s Careers Marketing Team has been engaged in events and activities aimed at helping high school students decide their career path. The Institute attended high school career fairs and university schools days at the Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Townsville and Cairns.  
 
We would like to say thank you to Moore Stephens Chartered Accountants in Townsville for representing the Institute at their local careers fair.  
 
It is important to provide support to students who are trying to decide on a career path as the decision can be very overwhelming. The Institute stand is equipped to provide all necessary information to students enquiring about a career in accounting. An attraction to our stand was our Nintendo Wii which ran a baseball tournament with Institute prizes given to those who could score ‘home runs’.  
 
In addition to working with high school students, the Institute attended the Business Educators Association Queensland Conference (of which the Institute is a platinum sponsor) on Saturday, 26 July 2008, to present accounting material to academics, teaching the subject at their schools. We spoke of our interest in visiting these schools to present the benefits of studying accounting, and also promoted our DVD ‘A day in the life of a Chartered Accountant’ to be released to all schools in August. Furthermore, we have hosted the QUT student society ‘firm crawl’ series which allowed a group of university students to visit several Chartered Accountant firms around the Brisbane City. 
 
Finally, the Vacation Employment Evening was held on Wednesday, 20 August 2008 which was open to 2nd and 3rd year students searching for part-time work experience. This evening was very successful, and attracted over 200 students to the Hilton Hotel to meet with 20 exhibitors offering placements.