Smeal Team Wins 'Rose Bowl' Of Case Competitions
A team of second-year MBA students from Penn State's Smeal College of Business took first place in this year's Pac-10/Big Ten MBA Case Competition hosted by the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. The contest, dubbed the Rose Bowl of business education, is considered to be one of the most prestigious MBA case competitions in the country.
Smeal Team Wins 'Rose Bowl' Of Case Competitions
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (January 24, 2006)—A team of second-year MBA students from Penn State's Smeal College of Business took first place in this year's Pac-10/Big Ten MBA Case Competition hosted by the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. The contest, dubbed the Rose Bowl of business education, is considered to be one of the most prestigious MBA case competitions in the country.
Smeal's team of Erin Bauer, Steve Bisbee, Arun Gopalakrishnan, and Ben O'Neil beat out teams from five other Big Ten and Pac-10 universities at the third annual competition between the top three teams from each conference. The Smeal team earned the opportunity to compete after winning the 2005 Big Ten Case Competition held in April at Ohio State.
The team arrived in Tempe, Ariz., on Jan. 12 accompanied by their coach, Nancy Mahon, communications instructor in the Smeal MBA Program. Team members received the details of a case involving Samsung Electronics the following morning and spent the next 17 hours working on a solution and putting together a presentation for the judges.
In the first round of the competition, the Smeal team defeated teams from Arizona State and the University of Washington. They won the competition by topping the University of Wisconsin in the second round.
"A 24-hour competition gets very intense," Gopalakrishnan said of the experience. "I think our team spirit helped us get through the pressure and put together a good, focused presentation."
O'Neil, who was also named Best Presenter at the competition, credits the team's communications skills for the victory. "Every team we competed against had really bright people on it. But in the end, it is the team that can best identify and articulate a compelling vision that wins," he said.
Mahon and Duane "Andy" Gustafson, assistant professor of business administration, prepared the team for this competition and the Big Ten contest last year.
In addition to the cash prize, the competition presented the students with the opportunity to network with other MBA students from around the country and with the business executives who served as judges.
The University of Southern California and Ohio State also competed in this year's contest.
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.
