Motor Fuels Tax Minute, Episode 54: Cultivating Greatness

In this week’s episode of Motor Fuels Tax Minute, our hosts bring back Tashiana Briggs, who discusses Weaver’s Cultivating Greatness program.

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Detailed Description of Weaver’s Motor Fuels Tax Minute, Episode 54

00:00:08
Kelly: Welcome to this week’s “Motor Fuels Tax Minute” where we usually talk all things motor fuel. But we are actually bringing Tashiana back on to talk about something that’s really important to Weaver.

As you know, our motto here at Weaver is people are our formula. And that goes into a lot of different areas, one of which is known as Expand the Reach. Tashiana has a specific program that she works with within Expand the Reach that she’s going to tell us a little bit more about.

00:00:28
Tashiana: Thank you for having me on again, I appreciate it. So, one of the programs that we have under Expand the Reach is called Cultivating Greatness. And what Cultivating Greatness is, is it introduces accounting, public accounting, to high school students that are from underrepresented groups.

What we do is we bring them in for, we actually have them do an application process. So right now, we’re working with three different districts across Texas. We work with the school ISDs, and each of them figure out what students they want to bring in. We have the student do an application process and included in the application process is a scholarship letter where they write us an essay telling us why business is important and why accounting is important to them as well as to the world. From that application process, we offer three scholarships to each district, and that’s $2,500, which is a renewable scholarship as well. So what we’re doing with that is saying, okay, if you meet any of the degrees that we hire from, you can get a degree within those majors as well as you are looking to work in accounting and you have a certain GPA, then we’ll renew that scholarship.

Students when they come in the door, what we have for them is just a half day. So they’ll come into our location. We don’t go out to them, but we have they come out to our location. We have all of the people at Weaver help us with networking so they understand networking skills. There is a case study where they work as a group.

We also have, just talking about the profession in general, about how much you can make, the benefits of being in public accounting, as well as having our leadership talk to them so they can see how far they can go within public accounting as well. And the reason we do this is because we feel like there’s a lot of students that don’t know what public accounting is, considering that everybody thinks accounting is just math, right?

I remember going into HISD and the students were like, ‘Well, I thought all I was going to do is use my calculator and Excel the entire time.’ And I was like, ‘No, that’s not the case at all.’ There are so many departments within accounting and an accounting firm. You have advisory, you have assurance. So just giving them that knowledge that they did not understand, that they weren’t just going to be bookkeepers. Right? That’s what a lot of people think of. There’s a lot of different ways you can be an accountant. And how does that look? And give them that information. Even in our case study, we kind of go through all the different departments within Weaver, and it is giving them information. They can look it all up and figure out, ‘Okay, this might be something that I want to do.’

It’s funny because the one that gives them bright eyes is forensics. They’re all like, you guys have an actual forensics department, and it’s trying to figure out what that is, you know?

But I will say the most rewarding part about this is when we do give out those scholarships, and you have students who are crying, or they just can’t believe they were the ones that actually won the scholarship because they put that effort into the scholarship essay. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to do that and just work with the schools and work with those students and know that we’re giving back. And then hopefully the goal one day is to say, okay, that we got these students in the door of accounting, and it doesn’t mean that they have to come to Weaver, but at least they know that there’s another option for them.

Click play above to hear the rest of the conversation.