Commerce students win business competition

Only Canadian team invited to prestigious competition walks away with top honours

2000-10-15 - KINGSTON, ON — October 18, 2000 — Four Queen’s School of Business undergraduate students are glowing with pride this week, after winning a prestigious international business competition held in Austin, Texas recently. The three-day competition hosted by the University of Texas and sponsored by the New Jersey-based Gallup Organization, wrapped up on October 14 after almost 60 grueling hours of work by the 18 undergraduate student teams. Queen’s was the only Canadian team invited by the organizers.

“We’re very proud of our Queen’s team —first for being the only Canadian team selected to compete in this international competition, and second for bringing the trophy home to Canada,” said Dr. Margot Northey, Dean of Queen’s School of Business. “We aim to prepare our graduates for positions of organizational leadership in the business world, and winning this case competition certainly suggests we’re on the right track.”

Among the participating schools bested by the Queen’s team in The Undergraduate Management Consulting Association International Business Challenge were defending champion University of California at Berkley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Texas A&M and University of Southern California, as well as teams from Hong Kong, Scotland, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil. Each team was given an equal amount of time (59 hours) to prepare a presentation that answered a real business challenge facing the sponsoring organization: “How do we [The Gallup Organization] go from a $200 million revenue organization in 2000 to a $1 billion revenue organization by 2005?”

After working tirelessly — including straight through the night on Friday — the Queen’s team of David Lambie (from Orleans, Ontario, near Ottawa), Calvin Lam (Scarborough), Steve Sottile (Thunder Bay) and Adrian Mucalov (Queensville, Ontario) presented their recommendations at 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning to the panel of judges comprised of senior officials from The Gallup Organization, University of Texas faculty, and local business leaders. The Queen's team emerged as one of the four winners of the preliminary round. Later that day the finalists each presented to the full panel of 12 judges. Queen's was announced as the overall winner at the event’s closing ceremonies. Among the reasons listed by the judges for choosing Queen’s was the team’s insightful recommendation that Gallup offer its unique expertise in researching attitudes and opinions to organizations struggling with post-merger challenges. Gallup officials were so impressed by Queen's recommendations that they invited the team to present to the company’s executive in the near future.

In addition to winning the overall prize, the Queen’s team was also awarded the “Student’s Choice Award” by the other participants. A new team from Queen’s will defend the title at the competition next year.

Queen’s School of Business (www.business.queensu.ca) is Canada’s leading business school and one of the best in North America. The school’s programs include: an undergraduate Bachelor of Commerce, with the highest entry standards in Canada and a 100% success rate in placing students in the job market; Queen’s MBA for Science & Technology, ranked #1 by Canadian Business magazine for four years in a row; the market-leading Queen’s Executive MBA, Canada’s first MBA program delivered by videoconference to sites from coast to coast; the Queen’s Executive Development Centre, Canada’s most popular university-level executive training facility; and the new MSc in Management and unique double-major PhD programs.

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For more information, please contact:
Laurie Ross, Manager, External Relations
Queen's School of Business
613.533.2319 / Lross@business.queensu.ca