A team of MBA students at the University of Georgia – Terry College of Business recently took top prize among thirteen other teams in the 2017 SEC MBA Case Competition in Gainesville, Florida.
The Terry MBA students, which included second-year MBA students Rohit Banerjee, Matthew Green, Noah Winterer and Desiree Sullivan, took part in the case competition early April in Gainesville. For the competition, teams were divided into four divisions and given just 24 hours to develop a solution for a business issue encountered by Nationwide Insurance. After the twenty four hours, during which students were analyzing the company and the problems it faced, teams would present their solution to a panel of judges, among which were executives at Nationwide.
The UGA team reached the final round after defeating schools like Arkansas, Mississippi and Kentucky State. In the next round, they were able to successfully take on schools such as Florida, Auburn and South Carolina, which finished in second, third and fourth place, respectively.
“Our team was well prepared because we knew we could be facing tough competition,” said Anne Cooper, director of the MBA student experience at UGA and advisor for the team. “… they did their research on Nationwide with their faculty advisor, Jim Carson, ahead of time, and when it was time for them to present they knocked it out of the park.”
For their success, the students were awarded with $10,000 and the chance to bring the SEC’s traveling trophy to Correll Hall, the UGA MBA program’s new home.
The SEC contest is in its fifth year, and has already planned to host the 2018 competition at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The goal of the case competition is to promote networking opportunities for graduate business students, as the MBA teams from schools across the conference have the opportunity to interact and learn from each other.