Congratulations to OCdt Aude Tétreault and OCdt Irene van der Poel for their stellar performance in representing RMC at the annual Queen’s Inter-Collegiate Business Competition. Hailing from the Department of Management, the student team finished in first place in Business Ethics from an initial 35 universities competing from across Canada and around the world.
As the team coach, I wish to thank the RMC Alumni Association for their generous support to this competition, Professor Naceur Essaddam, for pitching the case competition process as an innovative departmental strategy, Dr. Geoffrey Pond, for sharing his valuable insights and resource material, and Dr. Emilie Gibeau, for her rigorous instruction in Business Ethics. The combined collaborative efforts enabled us to generate an effective, highly competitive student team. This is now the second year in a row wherein we have progressed into the final round of the Queen’s (international) Inter-Collegiate Business Competition, where management schools and programs compete for bragging rights as the “best of the best.”
During the competition, the team had 5-hours to analyze a complex business case on global uranium mining, with an additional half hour to prepare a 15-minute presentation to the audience. Blind-review judging gave no indication of the students’ home university, as an infraction would lead to immediate disqualification. Aude Tétreault and Irene van der Poel confidently and effectively pitched their case to the judges and held to their position in response to a number of difficult and challenging critical questions.
Suffice to say, the first place finish left the cadets ecstatic! The winning announcement shocked us all during the final banquet. The students leapt up to receive their award, laughing and crying with excitement. They were so genuinely happy and enthusiastic they received a roaring applause from the 180 participants, observers, judges, and faculty advisors from around the banquet hall and numerous attendees rose to offer their heartfelt congratulations.
Throughout the competition, OCdt Tétreault and OCdt van der Poel were excellent RMC Ambassadors. To many participants, RMC was a unique and iconic institution. The students displayed outstanding poise, team spirit, and engagement, and at every opportunity, extolled the merits of RMC to the many curious participants we encountered. The team’s leadership, spirit, and enthusiasm was obvious, and their impressive decorum befitted our venerable institution. I felt very proud.
To put this achievement in better perspective, at our banquet table sat a team from Sydney, Australia, which had also attained a first place finish in their category of Business Policy. While chatting with their coach, he proudly informed me that their university had 15,000 management students representing the top 5% of students from across Australia. They screened all first year students to fill a handful of coveted spots on their business case competition team. They ran their own annual intercollegiate competition, along with a highly competitive student club. The coach had the team complete five 5-hour practice cases immediately before this final competition, they had just finished competing in Atlanta, and the team was preparing for a third competition in Singapore. His jaw dropped when I responded that our management program had fewer than 150 undergraduate students and this was the students’ first attempt at a competitive business competition!
The ICBC Competition is funded by donations to our Truth, Duty, Valour Fund