FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: October 15, 2007

The Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington MBA team of Lauren Hemingway, Kevin Kirn, Lisa Meyr and Hunter Saunders won the Pac-10 MBA Case Competition on Saturday, October 13. The annual competition was hosted for the first time by the UW with events at Seattle's Columbia Tower Club, the nearby Talaris Conference Center and the Foster School of Business. UW student Kevin Kirn and Arizona student Chris Gray won the "Best Presenter" awards.

Teams from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University took second place and third place respectively, while a team from Washington State University rounded out the field of competitors. This year, fewer schools traveled to the event than in previous years, citing difficulty assembling and preparing teams so early in the academic year.

Associate Dean Dan Turner selected a challenging, current case involving a company forced to make tough decisions between production of biofuels and food crops. Teams were given the case at 8 a.m. Friday and expected to deliver a set of PowerPoint slides and be ready to present to the judges by 8 a.m. Saturday morning.

Teams adopted alias names so judges could not connect them with particular schools. Judges for the competition were senior executives from major companies in the Pacific Northwest including managers from Amazon.com, The Boeing Company, F5 Networks, IBM, Microsoft, Nike and PACCAR.