Congratulations to IBH students Ocarina Lin, Angela Luo, Krushi Shah and Jiayi Wang on coming in third place at Deloitte’s National Undergraduate Case Competition in Westlake, Texas, last month! The team was eligible to compete in the national competition after winning first place at UMD’s Deloitte Case Competition in February. The national competition took place at Deloitte University on March 16-18, featuring sixteen of the top teams from universities around the country.
Lin, Luo, Shah and Wang are members of the first cohort of the Honors College’s new living-learning program, Interdisciplinary Business Honors (IBH). Coming from majors in computer science, finance, information systems, and operations management and business analytics, none of them had participated in a consulting case competition before. They found out about the opportunity through IBH’s connections to the Smith School of Business.
“We thought it looked cool, so we decided to apply,” said Wang. “We didn’t know what to expect and everything progressed very quickly. It was an awesome and memorable experience!”
The UMD competition was run by Deloitte representatives, employees and recruiters, and teams had to apply to participate. Each team had 24 hours to review a business-related case and provide a solution to the judges, including a slide deck to support their work. Their team was mentored by Leila Bouhussein, a supply chain and network operations analyst with Deloitte.
“Our team was given the challenge to advise a local grocery store on how to digitize their stores, like self-checkout and digital inventory solutions, to keep up with technology but not lose their personal touch and community ties,” said Shah. “It actually worked out perfectly because we had just been talking about Amazon’s digitization of the market in our Future of Work class last semester.”
All IBH students are required to take HBUS100: The Future of Work, which considers the future of business and work from a multidisciplinary perspective. Taught by IBH’s current faculty director, Professor Joe Bailey, the class discusses the effects of technology, AI, automation and other social and environmental justice demands on the workforce. Because of this preparation, they already had such issues on their minds and were able to provide a winning solution to the judging panel.
Right before spring break, Lin, Luo, Shah and Wang traveled on to the national competition at Deloitte University, the global consulting company’s Texas-based center for training future business leaders. This time, they only had five hours to review their case about expanding and promoting KleiWear, a fictional brand of sustainable clothing. The next day, they presented to a panel of judges who advanced them into the top four teams. For the final round, they received one more task with just one hour to find a new solution, which landed them in third place overall.
“The consulting process was brand new to me, but I was able to apply skills I’d learned in other situations, like giving counterpoints and rebuttals in my high school’s debate club,” said Lin. Luo added, “It’s all about problem-solving and critical thinking. We can apply all kinds of skills and ideas to business solutions if we’re creative about it.”
The team credits the IBH program for creating such a tight-knit community where students from all majors develop friendships and have interdisciplinary conversations that they may not have elsewhere. Because of these close connections, they were able to work together as a team on a new challenge, each contributing their own individual talents.
“Being in this supportive environment pushes me to do more and take advantage of the full college experience,” said Wang.
When asked if they would do it again, all four nodded their heads: “For sure!”
To learn more about the Honors College’s Interdisciplinary Business Honors program, visit ibh.umd.edu.
By Kate Spanos ’16 Ph.D. theatre, dance, and performance studies
