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A team comprised of three Dalton State College students won the
seventh annual Georgia Collegiate Leadership Conference Case Study
Competition recently, College officials announced today.
Eleven teams representing eight institutions competed in the event,
which was sponsored by the University of Georgia’s Center for
Leadership and Service during a statewide conference which took
place in Athens, Georgia.
The Dalton State trio came out on top for their solution to a case
study problem that involved demonstrating how they would effectively
cut five percent of state funds from a fictitious budget. |
Naomi Brown, Rita Tiwari, and Ashley Banks display the "check" they
received
upon winning the Georgia Collegiate Leadership Conference
Case Study Competition recently. |
Ashley Banks, Naomi Brown, and Rita Tiwari were the three
competitors, and the team won a $300 cash prize for placing first.
“These three students had never even met before they volunteered to
compete in this event, but they worked together as a team,
coordinated everything, and contacted each other on their own to
work out the details of their case study solution,” says Donna Lee
Davis, Assistant Director of Student Activities.
The case study involved a fictitious school, Paulson University,
which was facing a reduction of state funding from 40% to 35% of its
operating budget. Each team had to develop its plan to reduce its
operating budget by five percent.
“We looked at each area that had expenses, and based on the
information we had, we decided it was best not to cut jobs or
employees’ hours, but we did cut salaries,” said Naomi Brown, a
sophomore political science major.
“The school’s mission statement stated that they valued employees as
well as students, so we didn’t want to have anyone lose his or her
job.”
All teams were judged on their 10-15 minute oral presentation and
their written solution to the case study problem. The Dalton State
team prepared a power-point presentation that showed where they
would reduce spending and where they would try to increase revenue.
“We decided that we could increase revenue if we asked for donations
averaging $13 per person from Paulson’s 250,000 alumni,” Brown says.
“And we came up with a second option to raise revenues by having a
temporary tuition increase of $84 for each undergraduate student.”
Political science major Ashley Banks, a sophomore, says they did not
know immediately that they had won the competition, but that the
judges seemed very impressed with their presentation.
“The girl who was coordinating it came up to us afterwards and said
that ours was the best they had seen,” Banks says, “and that no one
else had come up with as detailed a plan for solving this problem as
we had.”
Rita Tiwari, a sophomore psychology major, says her experience with
mock trials in high school helped prepare her for the competition.
“We had to do everything so quickly,” says Tiwari. “Most of the
other schools got their case study two weeks ahead of the
competition, but we didn’t get ours until one week ahead. So we only
had one week to prepare.”
The students say that the fact that they’d never met before they
began preparing for the event amazes them now because the trio have
formed a lasting friendship.
“We had such short notice, and we just met three or four times, but
we got it done so fast,” says Tiwari, noting that “ideas were flying
left and right. It was a fun way to establish new friendships.”
Among the institutions in attendance at the conference were: Agnes
Scott College, Andrew College, Clark-Atlanta University, Dalton
State College, Gainesville State College, Gainesville State College
at Oconee, Georgia College and State University, Georgia Highlands
College, Georgia Perimeter College, North Georgia College and State
University, Reinhardt College, The University of Georgia and The
University of Georgia-Griffin Campus.
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