8 Okanagan College students preparing for prestigious case competition

While most are sitting by the fire enjoying Christmas specials this holiday season, eight students from Okanagan College’s School of Business will be preparing for one of the biggest competitions of their life.

Come the new year, those students will be travelling to Kingston, Ontario to compete in the final round of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious case competition, Queen’s University’s Inter-Collegiate Business Competition (I.C.B.C.).

Adrianna Knuth, who was selected to compete on the Human Resources team along with Madison Blancher, says they’re not just going to Queen’s to show up, they plan on winning.

“I’m feeling very confident about the competition and I’m so excited to represent Okanagan College,” said Knuth. “I think we’ll come out on top because the professors here give us a lot of applied knowledge, which positions us very well in case competitions.”

The College will be sending four teams of two to the competition who will each have a coach with them as well. Knute and Blancher will be coached by professor Roger Wheeler. Kyla Wiseman and Kristin Pitzoff, coached by Adrian Fontenla, will compete in Accounting. Anthony Peterson and Jared Hubner, coached by professor Glen Coulthard, will compete in the Management Information Systems category.

The fourth team, which will compete in the debate category, has yet to be named.

In order for those four teams to get to the final round in Kingston, they had to compete against 32 post-secondary institutions from around the world.

“Queen’s I.C.B.C. competition is known to be the pre-eminent business case event in Canada and has been growing recognition internationally,” said the President of Okanagan College, Jim Hamilton. “Once again our students are representing our institution extremely well and affirming that they are among the best in the country, if not the world.”

The finals take place from January 19th - 21st and will include competitors from the UNiversity of Toronto, University of Vermont and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, just to name a few.

Students will be given five hours to review a complex business case and prepare a 15-minute presentation for a panel of judges. No electronic resources are allowed, but teams can use any textbooks that they have brought along with them.