The semester started early for first-year MBA students who
participated in a case study hosted by Koch Industries. KU School of Business
lecturers Venkat Bendapudi, Steve Liggett and Wally Meyer prepared the students
for the annual first-year MBA KU Case Competition on Wednesday, Jan. 16.
They worked on the case for 24 hours and, on Thursday
morning, with the help of KU Media Productions, Duane McGregor, one of the four
judges and a senior business consultant at Koch, held a question and answer
video conference. Friday morning, the students travelled to the company’s
headquarters in Wichita to present their cases to a panel of judges. In
addition to McGregor, Chase Koch, senior vice president of Koch Agronomic
Services, LLC, Pamela Swedlund, human resource leader of Koch Industries and
Jeff Gentry, chief executive officer of INVISTA.
“KU Business Alumnus
Jeff Gentry was instrumental in making the competition happen,” said Catherine
Shenoy, director of MBA programs, “and Rachael Sanner, a KU alumna, coordinated
the event in consultation with Koch College Recruiting.”
Several members of
the business school staff and faculty travelled to Wichita with Shenoy,
Bendapudi and the students: Dee Steinle, administrative director of masters
programs; Jinae Krieshok, MBA recruiter; and David Byrd-Stadler, employee
relations coordinator.
The MBA students
presented their arguments on whether Koch should convert an existing facility
to produce the crop fertilizer YieldMax or whether a brand new facility should
be built. The six groups gave 15 minute presentations with an additional 10
minutes for questions. Suzelle Tala Medjou, Boyao Bi, Anas Maazouzi and John
Terkovich won first place; Colin Hartigan, Marion Caremel, Jacob Esau and
Prasanna Tadimeti won second place; and Paul Epp, Moses Jiang, Andrew Lovgren
and Gary Snider won third.
