This past April, a team of three women from BYU Marriott’s information systems program entered the invite-only CoMIS IT Competition held at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Of the twenty teams competing—five of which rank in the top twenty IS programs in the country—BYU Marriott’s team took third place overall and first place among U.S. schools. The team excelled as the first group of BYU Marriott students to ever compete in CoMIS.
“They simply had confidence,” says Greg Anderson, associate teaching professor and team faculty advisor. “These women went there with the idea that they were going to win.”
Participants from all over the United States, Canada, Hungary, and Singapore had twenty-four hours to research and create an argument from a business case.
“It was fun that you had a set amount of time to complete the business case,” says Suzy Cox, an IS senior from Mesa, Arizona. “We stayed up as long as we could and got about two hours of sleep.”
Joining Cox on the BYU team were Haley Kirk, an IS junior from Marina, California, and Maya Roney, an IS junior from Jackson, Wyoming. After twenty-four hours of diligent effort, the BYU team advanced from the preliminary round to the final round. In an industry where men have traditionally held most of the positions, the team distinguished themselves by being the only all-female team to compete in the final round.
“A lot of teams came up to us after our presentation and talked about how our method was different,” Kirk says. “We had a lot of people tell us they respected the way we approached the case.”
Competitions such as CoMIS offer students the chance to test their business expertise, teamwork ability, and problem-solving skills against other brilliant minds in simulated real-world business conditions. This competition gave BYU Marriott students the opportunity to showcase the skills they have developed within their programs.
“BYU Marriott has prepared women to be able to hold their own in a business setting where women are likely to be outnumbered,” Cox says. “This was something I recognized, and I wanted to do well because of it.”
The BYU Marriott School of Business prepares men and women of faith, character, and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Named for benefactors J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott, the school is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. BYU Marriott has four graduate and ten undergraduate programs with an enrollment of approximately 3,300 students.
Written by Sydney Zenger.
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