USI sees record-breaking attendance at 2024 High School Business Day

The University of Southern Indiana Romain College of Business held its 2024 High School Business Day Case and Scholarship Challenge, sponsored by the USI Accounting Circle, on Tuesday, November 12. This year's event saw a record-breaking number of participants with more than 170 high school students from 19 schools across Indiana and Kentucky.

High schools in Indiana represented included Bedford North Lawrence, Castle, Central, Crown Point, Evansville Christian, Families First Home Educators, Gibson Southern, Harrison, Loogootee, Master's Classical, North, North Posey, Reitz and Silver Creek. Henderson County, Kentucky, high school students were also represented.

"This year's High School Business Day Case and Scholarship Challenge was a resounding success," said Dr. Tom Noland, Professor of Accounting and Chair of the Accounting and Finance Department. "I would like to thank the students and their teachers for attending and the staff, faculty and accounting professionals that made the day run smoothly. Congratulationsto the winners."

The event featured a case competition where student teams were given a challenging real-world business problem. They presented solutions to a panel of judges made up of faculty, USI students and business professionals. Because of the volume of teams competing, judging was split by random drawing into two divisions. First place teams split $750 between members and earned $250 for their high school.

In Pool A, the winners were:

• First place: Evansville Christian (William Gilbert, Eli Edwards, Stephen Linge and Ryder Cartwright)

• Second place: Castle (Alex Hall and Chris Hocking)

• Third Place: North Posey (Katelyn Seibert and Audrey Fisher)

In Pool B, the winners were:

• First place: North Harrison (Samantha Carr, Gavin Dobbins and Lydia Windell)

• Second place: Evansville Christian (Carson McConnell, Caitlin Johnson and McKayla Morphew)

• Third place: Families First Home Educators (Kari Swartzentruber and Lillian Marley).

Students also had an opportunity to take a multiple-choice exam to test their knowledge of business concepts and terminology. Three students earned scholarships from the Romain College of Business including:

• First place: Tyler Schmitt of Castle

• Second place: Sydney Siebe of Henderson County

• Third place: Samantha Carr of North Harrison

Students, along with parents and teachers, had the opportunity to interact with student organizations from the Romain College of Business and tour the USI Campus with visits to the Biometrix Discovery Lab and Textual Analytics and Publishing Lab (TAPLab).

Students also listened to and talked with current USI seniors Amber Collier, accounting and finance major; Gracie Madison, marketing and public relations and advertising majors; Grace White, accounting and finance major; and Keely Fuquay '24, accounting major, and current Master of Business Administration student, who discussed their experiences on a student panel. They were also invited to listen to local professionals, and USI alums Kendall Burkart '22; Ryan Clark '18; and Braden Taylor '19, M'21, discuss post-graduation life as part of a professional panel.

"This is our first time as a school participating in this event so taking home first place, it's just surreal. We were all very shocked," said Ryder Cartwright, a member of the Evansville Christian team which placed first in Pool A for the Case Competition. "We put in a lot of work over the past month or so and it really paid off."

The event allowed high school educators to see their students experience what they've been preparing for in classes and recognize the impact of the event.

"Hopefully, they saw the real-world application of what we've been studying," said Garrett Veal, Business Teacher at Evansville Christian High School. "Our Business Management class has been working on some of these same concepts in class, so for them to see how it could apply in a real-world case, it's just great having that experience of being able to present that."

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