A recent business case competition sponsored by one of the nation’s leading accounting firms awarded first-place to a team of five accounting students from the Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas.
The team, which included graduate student True Tran, senior Anisa Din, junior Andrea Alvarez, and sophomores Jordan Anwer and Kevin Nguyen, were required to develop a business solution for a fictitious company called Saddles, Inc. The competition required each group to make a 30-minute presentation of their business solution and then participate in a 15-minute question-and-answer session with five senior accounting executives. The competition took place at the Dallas office of Grant Thornton, and included teams from UT Dallas, the University of North Texas, the University of Texas at Arlington and Texas Christian University.
The winning team at UT Dallas was awarded with $7,500 in prizes. UNT, as the second place team, was awarded $2,500. In addition, for their win the Jindal School of Management will be host of next year’s Grant Thornton Metroplex Case Competition.
The new competition has primarily come about as a result of John Barden, program director of the BS in Accounting. Also a team coach, Barden understood directly the incredible opportunity offered to students who took part in the competition. “They are judged by high-level executives in the field, giving them practical knowledge from real-world professionals, that they can combine with what they are learning in the classroom,” he said.
When Grant Thornton first presented the idea for the competition, there were 32 students interested. Working with Barden, they were finally able to reduce this number to 5, the maximum membership for a team. According to Barden, several factors were included in this evaluation such as communication and presentation skills, as well as the ability to be a team player.