School of Global Business undergraduate students Christopher Finney ’12, Ilya Gomelsky ’12, Margaret Lyons ’12 and Natasha Walewski ’12 received first place for Best Overall Performance at the 48th Annual International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition (ICBSC) in Long Beach, Calif., April 19-21. The students, who worked together as a team, were also awarded second place for their business plan, annual report and presentation.

The ICBSC is an international simulation competition that provides undergraduate and graduate teams with a learning experience in which they, in direct comparison with other university teams, run a simulated manufacturing company for five years. Each team is responsible for making strategic and operational decisions in marketing, finance, and operations. While striving to outperform the other firms in the industry, teams prepare a business plan, annual report, and presentation for their Board of Directors, a group comprised of business executives.

Under the supervision of Dr. William Biggs, Professor Emeritus, Arcadia’s team competed in the remote phase from February until April, followed by the intensive phase in Long Beach in April. Biggs oversaw the team of students as they progressed through the competition. “The students, as teams, in effect, run a company for five years in competition against student teams from other universities around the world,” said Biggs. “They made 20 sets of decisions, since each decision set represents a quarter of a year of running a company.”

“Our congratulations go out to these students for their hard work and success,” said Dr. Annette Halpin, Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Instructor of the winning students’ BA495 Policy Formulation and Administration Capstone course. “We should all be proud of them since they represented Arcadia very well. To be recognized as outstanding by external professionals says a lot about our business program and the university.”

The students presented their results and experience during the undergraduate capstone presentations on April 27.