CBA Teams Win Three First Place Trophies

CBA Teams with Professor Annette Lohman (center front)

On April 16-18, CSULB sent four teams to San Diego for the culmination of the 45th International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition and brought back three first-place top performance trophies.

The squads included Long Beach Digital, Inc., a team of undergraduate students, Juan Arias, Ashley Blythen, Eyad Aljubran and Jamison Hart, who garnered a first-place performance award and first place for their written reports; Global Solutions, a team made up of graduate students Nguyen-Khang Tran-Tan, Nui Valleta, Will Drover and Mary Ensch, who won a first-place performance award and were the first runner-up finisher with their written report; Beach Mobile, another graduate-level team made up of students Jefery Kusnadi, Justin Kleber, Sean Hernandez and Jimmy Nguyen, who earned the other first-place performance award; and the fourth participating undergraduate team, BeachWorks Industries, which included students Eric Solomon, Jeannie McElwain, Grant Brooks and Ching Fung Teai.

At the center of the competition is the Business Policy Game, a computerized and international simulation designed to enable advanced business student teams to integrate and apply the theories of their various business courses. Student teams organize into “worlds” and take over the management of a simulated company, competing against the teams of other schools in their world.

This spring was only the second time that CSULB participated in the competition. In 2008, an MBA team brought back a first runner-up trophy for their performance. The teams’ faculty advisor, Annette Lohman, from the Management and Human Resources Management Department, commented, “The students will tell you that this one experience has taught them more than they ever imagined when they started. It is one of the highlights of their academic careers, here, at Cal State Long Beach. This, I believe, is the true value in participating in the competition.”