Teams made up of students from both the University of Notre Dame MBA and Notre Dame's entrepreneurship master's program (ESTEEM) took first and third places in the recent AT&T Case Competition.
The competition, held Oct. 4 at AT&T’s corporate headquarters in Dallas, pitched Notre Dame against University of Texas-Dallas graduate business students in analyzing a case centered on “Big Data” and the challenges and opportunities presented by the resource for AT&T’s current and future business model.
The first place team – ND MBAs Alexandru Aleman, Patrick Riley and Katie Rossi, and ESTEEM students Daniel Collins and Alysha Thomas– took home prize money of $1,000 each. The third place team – MBAs Sienna Combs, Reid Sessa and Luke Smith, and ESTEEM students Hillary Bengtsson and Amanda Miller – received winnings of $400 each.
Thirteen joint teams of Notre Dame MBA, ESTEEM and Computational Math students first participated in a campuswide competition in September to determine who would travel to Dallas. The top two winning teams not only had the opportunity to compete against UT-Dallas, they also toured the AT&T Technology Engagement Center and networked with the telecom’s senior leadership.
"Notre Dame's strong engagement with AT&T was fully evidenced in this terrific event, which brought together graduate students across three programs that AT&T has targeted for recruiting,” said Patrick Perrella, director of Graduate Business Career Services at the Mendoza College of Business. “Our students had the opportunity to learn about the challenges and opportunities that Big Data represents for companies going forward, as well as look deeply into AT&T's business model. With 13 teams competing on campus, Notre Dame showed the enormous interest our students have in this topic."
The winning team of ND MBA and ESTEEM students (left to right): Alysha Thomas, Alexandru Aleman, Daniel Collins, Patrick Riley and Katie Rossi