By Nate Harold
For The Diamondback
A team of students from the University of Maryland placed second overall at an information systems competition last month after deliberating for 24 hours.
Hosted by the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, the Competition on Management Information Systems has had a team of students from this university represented there every year. The annual competition began in 2012 and is open to universities around the world. Teams began deliberating the morning of April 1 and had 24 hours to develop a solution to an assigned case and present it to the judging panel.
“CoMIS is an international case competition [that] is held to connect with other universities with strong information systems programs,” said Kathy Zhang, a junior accounting and information systems major. “It’s a student-run competition, which made it unique because it was sponsored by multiple companies.”
This year, the competition included teams from 11 universities across the country, with three undergraduate upperclassmen and one faculty member comprising each team. This university’s team, called Team ConsulTech, included junior Young Kim, an English and marketing major who goes by Kevin, and junior Zoscales Assefa, a finance and information systems major, along with Zhang.
Don Riley, an information systems professor with the business school, accompanied the team to the competition.
“I was one of a small group of five or six faculty involved with preparing [the team],” Riley wrote in an email. “Then I volunteered to accompany them. I was a faculty member at [Minnesota] for a number of years before coming here, and my two kids live there.”
The team read over the case regarding an information system error within Medtronic — the medical device company that sponsored the event — then discussed the different types of potential solutions. The team researched the company’s background to look at what types of technology it uses, how much it spent on that technology and what kind of technology it suggests using, Kim wrote in an email.
“As soon as the case was delivered to us, our 24-hour deliberation started, and we were confined to a hotel room during the entire period without any communication with anyone else,” Kim wrote. “We couldn’t use our phones as well, so it was just the three of us for the next 24 hours.”
After presenting to the judging panel and advancing past the first round, Team ConsulTech presented once again in the second and final round and placed second overall in the competition.
“[Assefa] worked on financials, Kevin worked on the managerial aspect of the case, I worked on the PowerPoint and we all came together to go over the platform we were proposing as that was the main solution of our case,” Zhang said. “It was important that we had someone focusing on different aspects of the case. As a team, we had very different viewpoints and that came together.”
Second place was the university’s highest finish since the competition began.
“For the Smith School and the University of Maryland … it helps establish and reinforce our reputation and validates the quality of our students and the education that we are providing to them,” Riley wrote.
He noted it also presented a career-building opportunity for the students involved.
“Participating in these kinds of competitions are great experiences for the students,” Riley wrote. “Some companies that recruit at business schools use ‘case-based interviews’ as a tool for selecting those to whom they make offers, so this is another way of preparing for those interview situations.”
