Smeal Case Competition: “We Are” Loving Kohl’s for Involvement at Penn State

Students are encouraged to be “doers”. A doer, simply put, is a person that does something. Penn State educators and faculty take pride in connecting their students with professional companies—and with the largest active alumni association, Penn State has a lot of connections.

Penn State ‘s highly ranked Smeal College of Business is putting their “doer” students to the test their business knowledge in a competitive and challenging environment. On March 21-23, 2013, Kohl’s and the Smeal College of Business hosted the 2013 Smeal Case Competition at the Atherton Hotel.

Rebecca Carey, marketing and media relations coordinator for the competition, says, “The Smeal Case Competition, presented by Kohl’s, is an undergraduate competition that challenges students’ knowledge, problem solving abilities and teamwork skills to solve realistic business problems in a demanding twenty-four hour format.”

“Sixteen teams were selected to represent the Smeal College of Business as well as the Commonwealth campuses. Kohl’s representatives, faculty, staff, and students are very excited to once again host the third annual Smeal Case Competition,” she adds.

Of the 16 competing teams, the four finalists competed for the Smeal Case Cup and a $5,000 scholarship from Kohl’s.

The winners of the Smeal Case Competition were the One Hit Wonders, which included Noor Nahavandi, Anurag Kumar, Ryan Saba and Chris Marthers.

The boys came together and worked as a team to present the best case about mobile technology to the Kohl’s representatives.

Nahavandi says because his teammates and he are interested in consulting, the boys were taken out of their comfort zone because this was more marketing based. They really relied on bouncing off each other’s ideas for story boarding all weekend.

“We had a strong relationship as a team right off the bat,” Marthers says.

Opportunities like the Smeal Case Competition prove that Penn State’s academics excel beyond the classroom. The colleges within Penn State constantly offer competitive opportunities – talk to your advisors.