The DECA-UGH Executive team posed for a photo during the Invitational.
Ontario’s future businesspeople came to the University of Guelph-Humber over the weekend to compete against one another in a DECA business case competition. The event was the annual Invitational of DECA-UGH, the business education organization’s campus chapter, and brought nearly 60 delegates and 14 judges to the university to faceoff.
In DECA competitions, teams are given a fictional business scenario and allotted a few minutes to plan a response. They might, for example, have to plan how they’ll sell a popular Canadian product in a new country, or think of a way to increase attendance to a lagging NBA team. No matter the topic, when time is up they have to present the plan they’ve made to a judge who will put them through a battery of questions and then assign them a score based on their performance.
It’s a high-pressure competition, but the organizers say attendees were happy to take part.
“This weekend went really smoothly and we were happy with how it turned out,” says Kevin Vong, 4th-year Business student and the president of DECA-UGH. “After provincials [which ran a few weeks prior], students usually want to try their hand in these competitions.”
Besides the formal competition, attendees had plenty to keep themselves busy. Organizers planned a quiz bowl competition, a social media scavenger hunt, and a keynote address from Daniel Lewis, the bowtie-clad owner of Brampton’s T by Daniel.
While the day hit an early hitch when a judge had to cancel at the last minute, Justin Medakiewicz, assistant program head of Business, stepped in to fill the gap. He joined the ranks of other professors, alumni and local businesspeople who lent their time and expertise to judge the competition.
Jenny Okonkwo MBA, CPA, CMA, is the principal consultant and president of Toronto-based Transform Consulting, and served as a judge at the Invitational. Though she was judging in the Financial Services category, she says the cases had students show the breadth of their business knowledge.
“The case was a realistic representation of the types of projects and financial professional may be involved in at the workplace. For a student to perform well required that they have an in-depth consideration and knowledge of multiple factors, not just finance,” says Ms. Okonkwo. “Finance is the backbone of every organization and it’s important that existing and prospective students do not see it as a ‘standalone’ discipline.”
Afterwards, the student delegates got a chance to mix and mingle with one another and the judges in a networking session.
“We had about one judge for every four delegates present, so that meant the students got a chance to have a conversation with them and pick their brains,” says Parisa Khazra, 3rd-year Business student and DECA-UGH vice-president of training.
Though their event has only just wrapped up, the team is already looking ahead to next year.
“We want to continue expanding the event in the future, so I’m hoping next year will be bigger. I’d love to see more students participate and to get more delegates from more schools,” says Kevin.
“We’d love to see more Media Studies students take part too,” says Parisa. “We added in a Pubic Relations category and I think their creativity could really help them there. Guelph-Humber is a unique school and competitions like this let us show off what all of our students can do.”
Learn more about UofGH's Business program.