Spears School graduate students participate in MBA case competition
Monday, November 23, 2015
Oklahoma State University’s Watson Graduate School of Management held its annual Masters of Business Administration (MBA) case competition in October.
This year’s winning team was J2B2, consisting of MBA students Brittany Copponex, Jakayla Porter, Jessica Shipp, and Rebekah Spaulding. The second-place winners in the competition were Sarah Gile, Ben Kline, Holly Colpitt, and Seth Smart. In third place were Dana McDaniel, Amber Odetallah, Carvel Montgomery, and Avriel Lowry.
In this internal competition, MBA students were asked to choose their own teams and analyze a Harvard case. This year the case was the Mountain Man Brewing Company and the teams had one week to prepare a strategy to present to judges.
In the preliminary round, all students competed and were judged by a panel of OSU alumni who currently work in various industries.
These competitions give MBA students the opportunity to showcase skills that don’t come across on a résumé. The students were judged on their presentation skills, communication skills, and their question-and-answer responses after the presentation. The judges chose the top three teams to compete in the final round.
The executive interaction round, the final round, was judged by high level executives. This judging panel consisted of Thomas Rossiter, vice president of Commercial Banking at Stillwater National Bank, Kathy Abrams, financial accounting global process manager at ExxonMobil, and Bob Toler, assistant vice president, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
The MBA students competing in this round were asked to present the same case. The judges ranked the three teams. The first-place winners received $250 for professional clothing expenses each and represented Oklahoma State in the Big 12 Case competition.
Jan Analla, assistant director in the Watson Graduate School of Management, believes the case competitions provide the students with great opportunities.
“Case competitions are a great opportunity for students to take what they are learning in the classroom and apply it in a business situation,” said Analla. “The students can practice their presentation skills when presenting to the panel of judges.”
These presentations have other great benefits as well. Almost every year one the MBA students who presented during the executive interaction round has received a job offer.
This year will be the 10th anniversary of the Big 12 case competition. Out of the nine competitions, OSU has one three times.
For information about the Watson Graduate School of Management and the MBA programs, please visit http://watson.okstate.edu.