UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. –– A team of Nittany Lion Consulting Group (NLCG) students recently took first place in Deloitte’s National Undergraduate Case Competition held at Deloitte University in Westlake, Texas.
The interdisciplinary team, which represented the Smeal College of Business, the College of Information Sciences and Technology, and the College of Engineering, included:
- Maria Mejia, an intended second-year finance and accounting dual major.
- Anwita Janga, a first-year Schreyer Scholar and applied data science major.
- Jack Patti, an intended second-year finance and accounting dual major.
- Akshaya Venkatesh, a first-year Schreyer Scholar and mechanical engineering major with a minor in economics.
The Penn State team, each of whom received $1,000 in scholarship money for the win, collaborated to place ahead of teams from Georgia Tech (second), the University of Maryland (third) and Carnegie Mellon University (fourth).
Those four teams emerged from a field of 173 teams representing 16 universities: Boston College, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Duke, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Northwestern, Penn State, Rice, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Virginia, Vanderbilt and Virginia Tech.
Teams competed in local competitions, with the winners advancing to the national competition. The objective was to examine a business case, consisting of a business challenge, and give a presentation of solutions that demonstrated and showcased problem-solving competencies for practical social impact challenges.
“This win, along with wins in other national competitions by past NLCG teams, provides validation that our experiential learning model is working,” said Dave Lenze, associate teaching professor in management and program director of Nittany Lion Consulting Group.
“NLCG doesn’t do any training for case competitions nor do we 'stack' teams for corporate competitions by putting our strongest students all on one team. Instead, we encourage our students to put together their own teams. We then trust that their hard work and the lessons learned from NLCG will translate to a case competition context. It seems to be working.”
Previn Joseph, a senior program management consultant at Deloitte who graduated from Penn State in 2019 with a degree in information sciences and technology, served as the team’s Deloitte mentor.
“It was great to see the Deloitte and Penn State partnership continue to develop such strong talent,” Joseph said. “This win is also a reflection of the Nittany Lion Consulting Group’s preparation and support.”