DENVER, April 15, 2019 — The undergraduate team from the David Eccles School of Business took first place in the eighth annual Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative’s Consortium Case Competition that took place April 11-12 in Denver.  For the first time ever, the event included a separate competition track for graduate students in addition to the undergraduate student track. The Eccles School’s graduate team took second place in that competition.

The national case competition blended a traditional case with a crisis-management simulation to give both graduate and undergraduate teams the opportunity to test their analytical and presentation skills and respond to challenging inquiries posed by two different panels of judges.

Congratulations to these winning teams!

Members of the Undergraduate case competition team are Benjamin Battistone, Mitchell Kenny, Merry Joseph, Ladan Mohamed, Sheva Mozafari, and Mathew Winterholler.

Members of the Graduate case competition team are Kristin Dahlin, Emily Erosma, Rossetti Farrell, Ben Lehnardt, and Alexander Rose.

In the undergraduate track, students from the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business were the first-place winners. The second-place team was from University of Colorado Denver’s Business School, and the third-place team was from the University of Wyoming’s College of Business. Students from University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Management placed first in the graduate competition. University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business placed second, and University of Wyoming’s College of Business placed third in the graduate track.

Ten teams of undergraduate business students, and 11 teams of graduate students, converged in Denver to participate in this unique competition, designed exclusively for universities that are members of the Daniels Fund Ethics Consortium from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. There were competing teams from: University of Colorado Denver’s Business School (undergraduate second-place winners), University of Wyoming’s College of Business (both undergraduate and graduate third-place winners), University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Management (graduate first-place winners), Colorado Mesa University’s Department of Business, Colorado State University’s College of Business, New Mexico State University’s College of Business, University of Colorado Colorado Springs’ College of Business, University of Colorado Law School, University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, and University of Northern Colorado’s Monfort College of Business.

In advance of the competition, teams were provided with a business ethics case involving a fictional gene-editing company. Students take on the role of a management consulting firm hired by the board of directors to help deal with ethical issues and risks at the company. Each team conducted an analysis of the ethical issues involved, and presented their prepared recommendations to a panel of judges. After a question and answer session with the judges, the teams received a second part of the case — a crisis that provides new information and puts a twist on the case. They had just four hours to re-analyze their original recommendations and make a second presentation to the judges.

The panels of judges for each track were comprised of business and community leaders, and evaluated presentations against established criteria, including the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Principles: integrity, trust, accountability, transparency, fairness, respect, rule of law, and viability.

The winning teams correctly identified many of the ethical issues present in the case and made important suggestions including developing a code of ethics, hiring a chief ethics officer and legal staff with expertise in the various internal markets in which the firm operates, reducing the CEO’s voting power on the board of directors, and changing the composition of the board to include more industry expertise and reduce conflicts of interest.

About the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Collegiate Program

Reflecting Bill Daniels’ personal commitment to ethics and integrity, the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Collegiate Program was established in 2010 to foster a high standard of ethics in students and to strengthen the teaching of principle-based ethics in young people. The five-year pilot was launched in 2010 with eight business schools at universities in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Due to its success, the initiative was renewed for another five years (2015-2019), and expanded to include two more business schools and one law school. To date, more than 400,000 students, faculty, and business people have been impacted by the Collegiate Program.

About the Daniels Fund

The Daniels Fund, established by cable television pioneer Bill Daniels, is a private charitable foundation dedicated to making life better for the people of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through its grants program, scholarship program, and ethics initiative. Visit DanielsFund.org to learn more.