Business students break UHV record for business simulation rankings
For the first time in the University of Houston-Victoria’s history, a team of business graduate students has ranked in the weekly Top 100 of the Global Business Simulation competition four times during the eight-week program.
UHV School of Business Administration graduate students Waqas Ahmed of Porter, Matthew Cianciosi and Jeanelle Lopez of Katy, and Ali Tamanna of Sugar Land made up the team C Dunder Mufflin Co. as part of the simulation. The team developed competitive strategies for a simulated action-capture cameras company in a global simulation of the worldwide economy.
“We used a lot of financial and statistical data, but we kept our focus on customer expectations,” Cianciosi said. “We just did our best to meet or exceed those expectations while also finding ways to minimize the cost of the product.”
In addition, team Alpha Pro – made up of Kimberly Chan of Sugar Land, Annie Dieu of Aurora, Colo., and James Greene and Daniel Moore of Katy – earned a ranking in the Top 100 during the last week of the competition.
Each year, students in the Global Master of Business Administration program compete in the simulation as a part of their “International Business Strategy” course. This semester, 3,515 teams from 166 colleges and universities around the world participated in the simulation.
The capstone course is intended to prepare students for the workforce by incorporating a learn-by-doing simulation and giving them hands-on practice. In the simulation, students can apply what they learned in class to make business decisions and be held accountable for the results.
Students in the competition were required to determine priority decisions of the simulated business by considering variable factors related to the environment, market and competition, and referring to case studies learned throughout the course. Win or lose, students gained a better understanding of the core issues an international business may encounter while trying to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
“The beauty of this simulation is that it adapts and changes based on the decisions made by the different teams, much like the real global economy does,” said Jifu Wang, UHV professor and associate dean in the School of Business Administration. “It encourages students to make decisions that will have actual effects on a changing environment. It’s exciting to see these students do so well, because it’s a sign they will be capable of operating effectively in the real business world.”
The University of Houston-Victoria, located in the heart of the Coastal Bend region since 1973 in Victoria, Texas, offers courses leading to more than 80 academic programs in the schools of Arts & Sciences; Business Administration; and Education, Health Professions & Human Development. UHV provides face-to-face classes at its Victoria campus, as well as an instructional site in Katy, Texas, and online classes that students can take from anywhere. UHV supports the American Association of State Colleges and Universities Opportunities for All initiative to increase awareness about state colleges and universities and the important role they have in providing a high-quality and accessible education to an increasingly diverse student population, as well as contributing to regional and state economic development.
