WBU Students Rank No. 1 in Global Competition

PLAINVIEW - Jonathan Darnell and Sebastien Tremulot graduate this semester with degrees in business administration. While Tremulot is planning to stay in school to work on a master's degree, Darnell has different plans.

"Finding a job would be nice," he joked. "I'm told as an adult I'm supposed to do that."

The job search may have gotten just a little easier for both seniors as Darnell and Tremulot can pad their resumes with a world-class accomplishment. The team finished in a tie for the No. 1 ranking in a global Business Strategy Game (BSG), competing against more than 5,000 sections from more than 49 countries. The game is used by business schools to train students to make management decisions. Teams compete as a shoe company and are evaluated based on earnings per share (EPS), return on average equity (ROE) and stock prices.

The game is a 10-week exercise. Darnell and Tremulot earned a top 100 ranking the first week and continued to build on their performance. They spent the last five weeks with an overall No. 1 ranking. It is the first time in Wayland history that a team has held a No. 1 overall ranking at any point in the contest.

"We made decisions about everything," Tremulot said. "Marketing, production, distribution … we weren't working with people, but we were deciding how to pay them. It's as close to a real-life experience as we could have."

The team completed the final week with an EPS of $40.70, an ROE of 67.2% and a stock price of $917.66. The finish earned them an overall score of 110.

Dr. Jason Geesey, associate professor of marketing, said the top-ranked finish is a testament to the team's hard work.

"This is more than just a game," Geesey said. "It's an actual simulation on the students' knowledge and ability to make decisions. There were a lot of different things they had to work on."

Darnell said the experience reinforced everything he has learned in the classroom.

"I learned what earnings per share was. I learned about return on equity. I learned about debt to income ratio. I learned how a financial sheet worked and all these things, but I didn't do anything with it," Darnell said. "This was cool because I got to take all the things I've learned here at Wayland and put them into a very practical experience."

Darnell, from Artesia, N.M., will graduate with a degree in business administration and a minor in Christian studies. He is getting married in December and moving back to New Mexico to find a job. Tremulot, from France, is a newlywed working toward permanent residence in the United States. He will graduate with a degree in business administration specializing in economics and finance.

 

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