Four students from Southeast Missouri State University took first place against eight teams at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis second annual International Business Case Competition.

The team consists of Malli Tahghighi, Jenny Macke, Kyle Jacobsmeyer and Chris Dzurick, who all split the first place prize of $1,000. They were led by Dr. Willie Redmond, professor of economics at Southeast.

The competing teams were each given an information packet about the Monsanto Corporation's vegetable seed business and had 24 hours to present their solution to a posed issue. According to Macke, the panel of judges scored based on physical presentation, recommendations the team made and plans to carry out the recommendations.

Representatives from companies like Dupont, Accenture and Boeing were some of the judges at the competition. Also joining the panel of judges was the chief information officer of Monsanto in India, Sumeet Srivastava. This did not intimidate the team. In fact, Dzurick said it was a networking opportunity for him.

"We were able to network with the professional judges that were there who work in corporate America, and hopefully we can use the skills that we've learned as examples of work in our future careers and we can use those networks that we built," Dzurick said. "It was an absolutely rewarding experience."

The group had prepared for almost six months. Each student brought their own skill set to the team. Dzurick and Jacobsmeyer are marketing management majors while Tahghighi is an accounting major and Macke is a human resource management major. Dzurick said he felt lucky because the case was marketing-based and sale-oriented. According to Jacobsmeyer, a big part of the competition was designing a logo for the brand with a slogan.

"Taking those skills that we've gained in classes like consumer behavior and advertising and promotion and applying those to a real world scenario is kind of where our marketing came in handy," Dzurick said.

The team competed in the Network of International Business Worldwide Case Competition in London in March. Jacobsmeyer said he enjoyed the competition in St. Louis more than in London.

"What was really cool about this one, though, is that it was a real case," Jacobsmeyer said. "He wrote the case for a real problem that his company was having. I actually went up to him afterwards and I asked him 'How are you going to solve this problem?'"

Srivastava told Jacobsmeyer the company is going to begin using their proposed ideas as soon as he returns to Thailand.

Overall the team members feel they learned many important skills working together that will be useful in their careers. Tahghighi said she is now confident in the skills she has developed as a professional.

"This was probably one of the best experiences I've had in college," Tahghighi said. "Being able to do the NIBS competition in London and then the UMSL competition in St. Louis, it's very rewarding. It's because that's what I've been working towards the last three and a half years."