Capstone Course Culminates With 'Corporate Exchange'
For most of the fall semester, the more than 700 Smeal College of Business students enrolled in the capstone course "Analyzing Business and Industry" have been managing a simulated business, competing for market share and profits in the $100 million electronic sensor industry.
Capstone Course Culminates With 'Corporate Exchange'
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (November 29, 2006) – For most of the fall semester, the more than 700 Smeal College of Business students enrolled in the capstone course "Analyzing Business and Industry" have been managing a simulated business, competing for market share and profits in the $100 million electronic sensor industry.
On Dec. 1, the top 20 percent of these students—those whose companies have fared the best—will present their shareholders' reports and defend their business strategies in front of a panel of 30 corporate-executive, faculty, and alumni judges.
The judges, acting as shareholders, will vote one company as the top performer.
Sajay Samuel, clinical assistant professor of accounting, designed the competition and interaction with the corporate judges to be a reward for the weeks of hard work that students put into their simulated companies.
"The students have worked all semester with the goal of defending their decisions in front of a panel of judges from the corporate world," Samuel said. "The competition started on the first day because they knew their companies had to perform if they were going to be awarded the opportunity to network with these high-profile alumni. It was a real motivator."
Samuel hopes the event will cap off the course every semester.
"The Corporate Exchange @ Smeal: From Classroom to Boardroom" gets under way at 3:30 p.m. in the atrium of the Business Building.
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.
