Auburn University's Harbert College of Business placed second nearly two weeks ago at the 2nd Annual Southeastern Conference MBA Case Competition hosted by the University of Alabama.
The SEC, known for its achievements in athletics, is given the opportunity to showcase its academics in competitions such as case competitions, which serve as the varsity sports of MBA graduate students.
All 14 SEC schools were represented by four-member teams in this particular competition. Auburn's Harbert College team of Lauren Little, Ty McCormack, Torrey Trawick and Kevin Dunham earned a $6,000 prize after finishing second to the University of Florida's Hough Graduate School of Business. The University of Georgia's Terry College of Business finished third, while the University of South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business took fourth.
The competition began with the 14 schools competing in four-team divisions, with the four division winners advancing to the final round. Shawn Bradley, Regions' head of customer insights and analysis, presented a real-word scenario facing the banking industry. The student teams were then left with a 24-hour window to map out strategies, develop solutions and prepare to present them to a panel of judges.
Torrey Trawick, MBA graduate student in the Harbert College of Business, said the team started with the basics, performing a SWOT analysis, which pointed out Regions' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the company, and then went from there.
Trawick admitted he felt at somewhat of a disadvantage going into the competition because many of the SEC business schools are labeled as prestigious. However, Trawick said he believes Auburn's College of Business proved itself with this competition.
"I kind of went in assuming everyone would be smarter than us," Trawick said. "We didn't think we were that prestigious, but coming in second lets people know that we are capable of taking what we're learning and doing something relevant to a big company like Regions."
Prior to the competition, the team had only worked together for a brief period, much of which was practicing presenting their solutions, Trawick said.
"The only thing we did was we were given a slideshow that was a presentation Regions put together for their shareholders about how they performed in the last quarter of 2014, and we split it up in four different ways and just practiced and practiced," Trawick said.
The team's faculty adviser, management department head.
Chris Shook, said the team handled the stress extraordinarily well.
"I was impressed with how well the students did with the very limited time available and the stress they were under," Shook said.
Lauren Little, who took Shook's Business Strategy class last semester and was also a member of the case competition team, said many of the concepts learned in that class, as well as Shook's coaching advice, helped propel them into 2nd place.
"We all took his strategy class first semester and that was the foundation for everything at the competition," Little said. "We learned a lot of concepts and strategies that we were able to transfer over to the competition. We ended up using a good bit of that stuff we learned and then he was our mentor for the competition so he had a large part to play.
"He was really helpful and is a smart guy with a lot of knowledge and without a doubt was a major part in us getting 2nd place."
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