20th Annual Collegiate Ethics Case Competition is a Hit!
The 20th Annual Collegiate Ethics Case Competition hosted by the Center for Leadership Ethics in the Eller College Management was once again a hit!
The 2022 competition hosted student teams from many different places of the world, gathering them all at McClelland Hall for the event.
The Collegiate Ethics Case Competition exposed students to a thought provoking business ethics case that they could face in their professional careers. The teams then analyzed, presented and responded to questions posed by a panel of judges.
The main goal of this competition is to challenge students' moral reasoning, provide a wonderful networking opportunity and in the end, raise students' awareness of the importance of corporate social responsibility.
Throughout the competition, judges utilized the following criteria to evaluate the teams:
- Delivery
- Depth of analysis
- Persuasiveness
- Creativity
- Recommendations that are both ethical and practical in a business context
- Responses to questions
The winners of the 2022 Collegiate Ethics Case competition were Shriya Penmetsa and Matt Cummings from Washington University St. Louis, winning a trip to Georgia for the Ethisphere Global Ethics Summit, a trophy and a $1000 cash prize. Second and third place winning teams were from the University of Iowa and Indiana University respectively.
"I was initially very nervous that I didn't know enough about the topic of the case -- the ethicality of university endowments investing in cryptocurrency," says Penmetsa. However, I learned so much during the course of our research and the competition. Not only was I proud that we were successful at the Eller Collegiate Ethics Case Competition, but I was also so proud of all the hard work my partner and I had put in with the help of our advisor. I met so many great students from universities all across North America and was honored to be competing with so many brilliant minds."
"What made Eller's Ethics Case Competition so unique is that we were invited to look beyond the individual pillars of the ESG model and instead examine its intersectionality," says Cummings. "With our case being focused on the ethical decision making of a college endowment, it shined a light on how much social power a financial vehicle of that size truly holds and how important it is to examine an investment's global impact."
“What impressed me most about Matt and Shriya’s research and presentation was their incorporation of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Ethical) dimensions and their recommendation that their client should invest in cryptocurrency, but do so with companies utilizing proof of stake as opposed to the more energy intensive proof of work consensus mechanisms,” says Paul Melendez, University Distinguished Outreach Professor and Founder of the Center for Leadership Ethics.