Case Team In Bloom
Supporting our Undergraduate Case Team
Culverhouse’s Undergraduate Case Team is the passion project for this year’s Bama Blitz. Help ensure UA students can continue to thrive in this environment as well as bring home more victories. Make your gift today!
Undergraduate Case Team Solving its Way to the Top
The Culverhouse College of Business’ Undergraduate Case Team began with a simple moment of curiosity. While traveling abroad, Quoc Hoang, director of experiential learning at Culverhouse, noticed a display wall at the Rotterdam School of Management celebrating its case competition club, including a prestigious Champions Trophy victory in New Zealand.
“I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” he said. At the time, Hoang was working with students in the Manderson MBA to prepare them for that season’s case competitions, team-based high-pressure simulations that task competitors with crafting a business solution based on a real-world business problem. The events are mainstays of MBA programs and over the years, students in Culverhouse’s Manderson MBA have done exceptionally well, winning competitions all over the country.
When Hoang returned from Europe, he shared his concept of starting an undergraduate-specific case team with UA Management Consulting Academy (MCA) president Joe Clark, a senior at the time.
Soon the Undergraduate Case Team was born. The goal was to give students hands-on experience solving real business problems, just like their peers in the MBA program. The method? Jump in immediately. “We just said, ‘Why don't we throw our new members into a case competition?’” Hoang said.
Kelby Olson and Lauren Geisler were newcomers to the MCA who, along with six other students, were thrown into the fire at the Darla Moore School of Business Consulting Summit and Case Competition. The challenge involved developing a market entry strategy for a construction startup that manufactured a specialized concrete mold.
"I had no idea what it was,” Olson said of case competitions. “When we got into our groups and started working on the case, we learned more about what it was by doing it. Something that was so daunting at first was something we wished we knew existed all along.”
The team, which included Olson, Geisler, Gabriella Gaston, and Jack Reinig, put in over 50 hours on their pitch, researching potential markets, developing a strategy, and ultimately recommending a solution of expanding into Canada. Their proposal won.
The early success was a turning point not only for confidence, but for what experiential learning could look like. Geisler, who comes from a non-business background, said the experience proved something important. “It was confirmation that we were able to use our critical thinking skills, our problem-solving skills, and some of those more soft skills in our education,” she said.
More success followed with a victory at the University of Vermont’s Schlesinger Global Family Enterprise Case Competition with the team of Joe Clark, Ella Foes, Bailey Liddle, and Angel Peterson.
The group was hungry for more, and the early confidence and success led the team to the Management Consulted World Cup to compete among 50 other schools. After the virtual presentations, the team of Geisler, Olson, Gaston, Reinig, and Noah Bush gathered in a room and listened over the speakerphone as the top five placements were announced one by one. The tension grew until second place was called out. It wasn't Alabama, and the team members erupted in celebration, knowing they brought home the win.
“It really just takes me back to the moment itself, just the pure shock,” Geisler said. “They're telling us fifth place. They're telling us fourth place and third place, and then the initial disbelief and the shock of, ‘Oh, my goodness, our team won.’ It was just pure excitement and a sense of gratification from the entire day of hard work we put in.”
That special moment encapsulated what the Case Team experience means to Olson. “You have a group of students who are in college, it’s a Saturday afternoon and we're sitting in a conference room and we're all fired up,” Olson said of the World Cup win. “We're building really close bonds. We're having experiences that we're going to remember for the rest of college.”
The team started with modest goals of simply competing, improve with each case, later earn respectable finishes, and one day compete in the Champions Trophy in New Zealand. While the group is charting its course to reach that final goal, Case Team goes beyond trophies and accolades.
“I think the overall goal in the bigger picture is to put Alabama's name on the map,” Geisler said. “To show that our students are capable of winning these competitions and to be able to give that back to new students who want similar experiential learning opportunities.”
For Hoang, Case Team has become far more than competitions. It’s an avenue for students to challenge themselves and stay engaged. He has seen how motivated Alabama students are to take advantage of opportunities that push them beyond the classroom. “We’ve got students that want to be engaged across campus,” Hoang said. “Sometimes that’s in their discipline. Sometimes it’s related to a group like a fraternity or sorority. Sometimes it’s to create something that doesn’t exist before.”
At the same time, Hoang said the experience benefits everyone involved, including the faculty who help guide the team. “Sometimes it’s easy to think that the educator educates the student,” he said. “But the beauty of this work is I learn from these guys every day. It began as a simple idea. Over the last year and a half, we’ve been able to build something truly special.”
Your generosity helps cover travel, lodging and competition expenses, ensuring these students can continue to learn, compete and proudly show the world that, truly, Bama Means Business.
Support Our Students
