Idaho State College of Business Partnering with Idaho Central Credit Union to offer a High School and College-Level Case Competition

With the generous support of Idaho Central Credit Union (ICCU), The College of Business at Idaho State University will host a new Case Competition geared at high school and college-level students. The competition, which results in cash prizes, serves to showcase pathways to a successful career, which can be applied to several fields such as finance, consulting, marketing and technology.

 The competition will double as a late eight-week course from March 7 - April 29 which can fulfill one credit (ECON4492); however, students do not have to sign up for the course to be part of the competition. 

Patrick Pinheiro, who is the Vice President of Risk Management at ICCU came up with the idea for the competition.

“This case competition came from a desire to offer a forum where college and high school students can have access to a major employer in the region, working through a real-world problem,” said Patrick Pinheiro.

With guidance from industry experts at ICCU and professors at Idaho State University, students will be provided a prompt with a high-level problem commonly faced in financial institutions, which they will spend the following weeks resolving. Students will work in teams, where each group has a mixture of disciplines represented. These student teams will have the opportunity to learn the usefulness of data analysis, computer programming, marketing strategies, and the importance of geography from leaders at ICCU and professors in the College of Business.

“Students will work in groups of a mix of college and high school students. We will give students a prompt, a problem, that will be specific and broad in how to go about addressing it,” said Pinheiro. “The reason we will make it broad is to not restrict students’ creativity and resources that they decide to use. The prompt will be addressed over a period of 6 to 8 weeks, which will include coaching from professors of different disciplines and ICCU professionals.”

Each team will have the chance to win cash prizes including $5,000 for first place, $3,000 for second place, and $2,000 for third place per team.

Idaho State students from any major can enroll in ECON4492 if they choose to participate in the Competition as a class. But, all students (high school or 

college-level) must email Dr. Iris Buder by March 4 to be part of this competition (buderiris@isu.edu). Once the Competition begins, students will meet once a week for one to two hours or via Zoom.