Bauer Graduate Students Sweep Supply Chain Competition
Bauer Teams Claim Top Three Spots at District Competition
Published on April 20, 2017
Graduate students Negar Nikpour, Aqib Sunesara and Ankita Jaiswal took home first place during the 2017 APICS Terra Grande District Competition, securing a spot to compete at the national level in October.
Three graduate student teams from the C. T. Bauer College of Business swept a recent district supply chain competition, earning the top three spots at the 2017 APICS Terra Grande District Competition and besting competitors from Sam Houston State University, UT Dallas, UT El Paso and Texas A&M University.
The first place team (MBA students Aqib Sunesara and Ankita Jaiswal and MS Supply Chain student Negar Nikpour) received a $1,500 prize.
During the competition earlier this month, students were tasked with improving the sales, purchasing, supply chain and operations of a company with a negative ROI — skills they’ve learned to master throughout their time at Bauer.
“We’ve learned a lot about optimizing business practices and improvement techniques in our supply chain classes,” Jaiswal said. “All the terms and case studies we’ve learned about in the past two years really helped us compete.”
Prior to the competition, Clinical Assistant Professor Gordon Smith advised participants and offered guidance on how to apply the skills they’ve learned in class to real-world situations.
“It was a wonderful opportunity for us to learn more about actual operations before entering the market so that we can see the actual results when we apply what we’ve learned in our courses,” Nikpour said.
The top team also won the opportunity to represent the Terra Grande District in the 2017 APICS Annual International Conference this October, where they will compete against winning teams from APICS districts in the United States and around the world.
“It’s not just about attending the competition. It’s also about the exposure we are going to receive being there,” Sunesara said. “We’re going to be competing with teams from Europe, Africa and Asia. It’s a really exciting thing to be a part of.”
The 2017 competition victories add to what has become a winning tradition for Bauer supply chain students, Dean Latha Ramchand said.
“The very nature of these experiences makes students discover their abilities and empowers a level of confidence that is valuable,” Ramchand said. “That we were able to win first, second and third place speaks to the talent of Bauer College students and the commitment of faculty who provide curricular and co-curricular development opportunities that allows students to excel.”
The three finalist teams are listed below:
1st Place
Aqib Sunesara, MBA Candidate
Ankita Jaiswal, MBA Candidate
Negar Nikpour, MS Supply Chain Management Candidate
2nd Place
Bryan Schoener-Scott, MBA Candidate
Benjamin Samuel, MBA Candidate
Nusabbeh Waqar, MBA Candidate
Zeinab Zamani, MBA Candidate
3rd Place
Alex Gallo, MS Supply Chain Management Candidate
Rushabh Patel, MBA Candidate
Jessenia Rucoba, MS Supply Chain Management Candidate
Gelila Lulseged, MBA Candidate
Yanxin Li, MBA Candidate