Smeal Survivor Produces Newest Winner
Smeal Survivor Produces Newest Winner
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (April 19, 2005)—Michael Ettinger, a Penn State senior majoring in finance and history, weathered three intense rounds of questioning from a panel of judges and emerged as the winner of Smeal Survivor V, an annual competition in which undergraduates become virtual CEOs of multi-national, multi-billion-dollar companies.
The Smeal College of Business event on April 18 challenged the 11 student participants to respond to complex situations posed by members of the Seven Revolutions Team at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Ettinger, who is from Huntingdon Valley, Pa., represented British Petroleum, earning a trip to the World Business Forum in New York City for his victory. Other Smeal Survivor competitors included:
Cornelius Cornelssen (Vivendi Universal), Junior, History, Fort Washington, Pa.
Catherine Rose Harrison (Merck), Junior, Marketing, Downingtown, Pa.
Alexander Keller (Viacom), Junior, Finance/Economics, Lititz, Pa.
Travis Kochel(Deutsche Bank), Junior, Marketing, Indiana, Pa.
Christopher Major (General Motors), Senior, Finance, Mount Union, Pa.
John Nelson (Bank of America), Junior, Finance/Economics, Barnegat, N.J.
Tejasvi Raghuveer (Volkswagen), Senior, Economics/International Business, Morganville, N.J.
Brent Rhodes (ExxonMobil), Junior, Supply Chain & Information Systems, Auburn, N.H.
Ryan Sheetz (Procter & Gamble), Junior, Marketing, Altoona, Pa.
Anna Leigh Zusinas (Pfizer), Junior, Management, Moon Township, Pa.
The Seven Revolutions Initiative at CSIS served as the foundation for all questioning during the competition. The initiative shapes public policy and encourages current and future leaders to consider how the world will change through the year 2025, and what those changes will mean. The project focuses on seven distinct drivers of revolutionary change: population, resource management, technological innovation and diffusion, the generation and distribution of knowledge and information, economic integration, global instability and conflict, and the challenge of governance.
Smeal Survivor participants each assume the role of a CEO of a real-world company. Presented with hypothetical situations of a global nature, the students have mere minutes to deliver a corporate response to the judges and live audience. Based on the quality of their responses, student CEOs are then voted out of the competition or move to the next round. The last-standing survivor wins a trip to the World Business Forum in New York City.
Judges for Smeal Survivor included Jeff Cargnel, general operations manager for NVR; Stuart Hoffman, senior vice president and chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group; Kevin Joyce, vice president of re-marketing for Ingersoll-Rand; Judy Olian, dean of the Smeal College; and Colin Watts, worldwide president of Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Nutritionals.
Event sponsors include PNC Financial Services Group, Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, NVR, Shell Oil, and Ingersoll-Rand.
REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
