The global supply chain competition winning team and judges: from left, Rob Marconi (winning team member), Priscilla Burke (Global Sourcing Manager for Stanley Black&Decker), Arash Shishbaradran (winning team member), Emily Jones (winning team member), Cindy Buschman (Supply Planning Manager for McCormick & Co.), Rachel MacKnight (winning team member), Leonard Novak, Diurector of Procurement for Bluegrass Materials) and Chaodong Han (Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in Supply Chain Management and Project, Program and Portfolio Management)
It has often been said that “For those things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” That adage was especially true for an impressive group of Towson University business and economics students.
TU’s College of Business and Economics recently held its second Fall Case Competition, sponsored by the Toby and Melvin Weinman Foundation. Four teams competed in each of the two tracks – marketing and global supply chain – and had two weeks to prepare their solutions to the cases.
The Institute for Supply Chain Management contributed the global supply chain case that asked students to weigh the costs and performance of working with an offshore supplier for product containers. Representatives from McCormick & Co. and Stanley Black & Decker as well as a TU supply chain professor determined that Rachel MacKnight, Emily Jones, Rob Marconi and Arash Shishbaradran won the global supply chain competition. They will go on to compete at the Weinman Cup Competition (a regional competition hosted by CBE) in the spring.
Local restaurant franchise Sofi’s Crepes provided the marketing case that asked students to develop with marketing tactics to improve revenue by 20 percent. The restaurant’s owners, managers and franchisors judged Stacey Heubeck, Joe Bachir, William Newman, Gregory Bishop and Robin Aspromatis to be the winners of the marketing competition.
The competition was created with the help of the Toby and Melvin Weinman Foundation to provide students the opportunity to exercise their business savvy while networking with local business leaders.
The winning marketing track team: Robin Aspromatis, William Newman, Gregory Bishop and Stacey Heubeck. (Not pictured but helped the team to the victory is Joe Bachir)
