by Doug Johnson
It is my pleasure to announce that last Friday Feb. 26, the University of Illinois was named as one of four finalists in the Marshall Case Competition at USC.

In accomplishing this excellent achievement, our team, Stephanie Cheng, Marc Grey, Jason Jochum, and Stephanie Katz, competed against a field representing some of the best undergraduate business programs, not only in the U.S. but the world. Schools represented in this year’s competition included Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Indiana, McGill, University of Melbourne, Wharton, and Texas, as well as many other top schools from around the world.

Besides Illinois, the other finalists in the competition were the Copenhagen Business School, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and USC. The competition was won by a very deserving team from Copenhagen. While the judges do not officially discriminate between second, third, and fourth positions, we were told unofficially that we “just missed” winning the Marshall Cup.

I had the good fortune of seeing our team present, and let me tell you, win or lose, they did a fantastic job! Their analysis, recommendations, and presentation of the case on Acer Computer was great! The University of Illinois and the College of Commerce were very well represented. Given that this was the first time the University of Illinois competed in this competition, our team’s performance was even more impressive.

I am sure that you will all join me in offering congratulations to our team.