Whitman team takes home first place in campus JPMorgan Chase Case Competition

Whitman team takes home first place in campus JPMorgan Chase Case CompetitionNovember 17, 2008Margaret Costello Spillettmcostell@syr.edu

Replacing PIN numbers with thumb print scans, incorporating social networking media into the corporate workplace, and adopting green technologies were among the ideas presented by enterprising Syracuse University students during the JPMorgan Chase Case Competition held Friday at Hinds Hall.

“All four teams were incredibly great,” says University Professor of Practice Jeffrey Saltz. “It’s amazing what the students were able to accomplish in this one day. Everyone did a great job.”

Four teams of four undergraduates from SU’s School of Information Studies (iSchool), College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science (LCS) and Whitman School of Management competed in the daylong event. The teams selected from four topics: “Innovation in Financial Services,” “Going Green,” “Knowledge Transfer and Management” and “Privacy/Ethics in Information Usage.”

“It was a chance for the students to work under pressure, to work in a real-world situation with real-world information and potentially real-world results,” says Shay Colson G’10, competition organizer and a graduate student in information management at the iSchool. “We hope it was a great experience for everyone involved.”

The student teams selected their topics Friday morning and spent the day researching, brainstorming, and creating and practicing their PowerPoint presentations. During 15-minute presentations, each team talked through a plan of action for the financial services giant about the problem and its solutions.

The iSchool and A&S teams focused on knowledge transfer and management. Each suggested employing social media, modeling after such popular social sites as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia to build knowledge banks and to improve communications and processes within the company.

LCS students presented on going green, and Whitman students focused on innovation in financial services, suggesting the company reduce credit card and ATM fraud by replacing PIN numbers with thumbprint scans.

A panel of four judges from JPMorgan Chase questioned the teams about their presentations, often asking for more detail about the research the students conducted or for estimates of the costs and savings to the company.

The order of finish in the competition was:

• First place-Whitman School: senior Jocelyn Lederman, senior Harris Levinson, junior Nicole Quidley and junior Gary Stefanski, $1,750 prize;

• Second place-School of Information Studies: sophomore James Benninger, senior Andrew Kieffer, sophomore Mike Loiero and sophomore Maxine Shaw, $1,000 prize;

• Third place-College of Arts and Sciences: senior Chad Brooker, junior Lane Musgrave, senior Joonas Niiholm and senior Drew Sullivan, $500 prize;

• Fourth place-L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science: senior Peter Frey, senior Mike Lattar, junior Jeremy McCarthy and senior Gafei Szeto, $250 prize.