Stetson Wins Big In International Business Ethics Case Competition

Students on Stetson’s Business Ethics Case Competition Team won four first-place trophies at the International Business Ethics Case Competition held earlier this year in Boston, according to a media release.

The members of Stetson’s winning team include Emma Smith, Sadie Jensen, John Owen and Bella Degenhardt. The students, from Stetson’s School of Business Administration, competed against other top undergraduate teams in the competition’s four categories. 

According to the release the Stetson team won in the Full Presentation (25 minutes); Jensen and Owen won in the 10-minute presentation; and Jensen won in the 90-second presentation. In addition, the team took home the IBECC Biathlon, dubbed “The World’s Most Intellectually Daunting Biathlon.” That winner is determined by cumulative individual and team scores. 

Stetson students won with a presentation case titled “Fighting the Scourge of Fentanyl: Tough Love or Harm Reduction?”

Among the other school competing were Penn State University, Wilkes University, Fordham University, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, California State University at Northridge and College of the Holy Cross., the release states.

Teams invited to the IBECC competition select their own case for presentation. Stetson prepared a case titled “Fighting the Scourge of Fentanyl: Tough Love or Harm Reduction?”

According to the release, team members assumed the identity of consultants (Top Hat Consulting) who were advising Pfizer Pharmaceuticals on a pilot program for use by universities to guide their response to the opioid epidemic. The pilot program, called the “Pfizer Forward Fund,” was designed for implementation in West Virginia, where the per capita death rate from fentanyl overdose is highest. The target schools for the pilot were nine public universities in that state.   

The Stetson BECC Team, now in its 12th year, is under the faculty leadership of professors John Tichenor and Jim Beasley.

“The IBECC judges were extremely impressed with the polished presentations and the strong analytical skills displayed by all four students on our team,” Beasley said in the release.