By Alexandra Yeboah
Not even a year and a half after the launch of Ryerson’s MBA programs, its students are bringing in the silver.
At the end of October, four Ryerson MBA students entered the Tata-Schulich Competition in October and placed second out of eight teams.
Competitors were given three hours to develop a way for Dutch ABN Amroto to fulfill it’s “corporate social responsibility,” in the development of an oil project. That is, it’s responsibility to the environment and society, not just it’s shareholders. No external information was allowed.
“[The competition] was intense, I was sweating a bit,” said team member Andrew Quattrociocchi. “We knew all along that the way we formulated the strategy was very good.”
Corinne Geller, Abdul Rahman Dabban and Komal Rais were also members of the second place team.
Dale Carl, director of graduate studies at the Ted Rogers School of Management and attended the competition, said the result has an added bonus: it will reflect positively on Ryerson.
“I was delighted on a personal note for our students [because this win] would help showcase the Ted Rogers MBA program to other universities and the business community,” Carl said.
The team formed only days before the Tata competition during a Ryerson integrative week.
“Other teams [at the competition] practiced together for more than a year,” said Quattrociocchi. “Our team was formed in less than a week.”
Mukesh Gupta, executive director of Tata Cup and a judge, said he thought the competition was a fantastic opportunity for Ryerson to compete with other schools.
The winners, said Gupta, were, “those able to understand and offer the best solutions. The judges had no idea which team belonged to each school, it was impartial.”
Team members, Peter Wojewnik and John Riccio also helped the team place at Ryerson and thus be selected for the competition but could not attend Tata due to a four member limit.
Carl said he expects Ryerson will send a team to the competition, which ran for the second time this year, next year.
He said they have already signed up for a competition at the University of Toronto in November and other competitions are in the works.
A second Ryerson team, comprised of Michael Hutson, Shelly Mohamed, Adrian Sluga and Kui Jun Xu.
When asked why they chose Ryerson’s master program over other schools, Geller said it was Ryerson’s, “welcoming environment and that [we] got to know everyone on a personal level in an intimate learning environment. [We] were the only school that had people coming to [the competition] to support us.”
The MBA Student Association cheered on Ryerson’s team. MBA students will attend the Rotman case competition at the end of this month.
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