• National Intercollegiate Business Ethics Competition
• PolyHouse - Receives Media Attention
• Bank of America Low-Income Housing Challenge - 3rd Place
• International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition

National Intercollegiate Business Ethics Competition

A team of four Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business graduate students took on graduate and undergraduate programs from across the country in the LMU Ethics Fortnight. The annual event was hosted by Loyola Marymount University’s Center for Ethics and Business.
Katie Hofman (MBA), Meghan Girvin (MBA), James Towers (MBA) and Seton Schroeder (MBA and MS in Electrical Engineering) competed against 37 teams (graduate and undergraduate), including teams from Loyola Marymount, University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School, Dartmouth University, New York University, Texas A&M, University of Southern California, University of Washington, Villanova and the US Naval Academy.

The students presented a compelling case about credit card companies marketing on college campuses. According to Hofman, “It was interesting to see how the Cal Poly curriculum addressed many of the ethical dilemmas that the other teams raised. While the Cal Poly team did not win, they felt very good about their effort and believe that they were very close to the top of the field. Meghan Girvin reported that “although we didn’t win, we felt we gave a good showing and really represented Cal Poly well.

The weekend was not a total loss however as Seton Schroeder placed second in his division for the 5K run. The self proclaimed “Weirdest Biathlon” took place over the course of three days with running and ethics as the two events.

POLYHOUSE - Extreme Makeover the Cal Poly Way!

The media supplied much deserved recognition for the "extreme makeover", performed as part of the PolyHouse Project. Professor Roya Javadpour lead Engineering Managment, Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, and Industrial and Technical Studies graduate students through the intense technological project management class (IME 556). The result, a fantastic "Learn-by-Doing" experience that benefitted one local family.

Information about the course, project and clips of the media coverage can be found at www.polyhouse.org

3rd place in the Bank of America Low-Income Housing Challenge

An interdisciplinary team from Cal Poly with representatives from the Orfalea College of Business graduate MBA Program (Cody McNeal, Stacey Westenberger, James Towers, Steve Feng, and Billy Jenks), MS in I &TS program (Adam Loucks) and College of Architecture and Environmental Design collaborated to produce The Crossing, a 56 unit low-income housing development for the city of Santa Maria. 

The competition, which included such teams as Stanford graduate school, UC Berkeley graduate school and Cal Poly, required that each university partner with a nonprofit developer and several community organizations in constructing their proposal.  Employing a holistic approach to the built solution, Cal Poly’s team identified a viable site and developed a proposal that incorporated elements of finance, design, sustainability, and community support. 

The Crossing was a complete $19.1 million transit-oriented development proposal employing exhaustive market studies, planning constraints, design highlights, construction realities, and multi-layered cross-contingent financing for the revitalization of a downtown neighborhood.  A simple goal of the development was to achieve sustainability across the triple bottom line: social, economical, and environmental.  The Crossing took first place in sustainability category. 

Cal Poly’s final proposal for The Crossing was presented at the Bank of America headquarters in San Francisco, and the team placed third overall in the competition. The team elected to donate their cash prize award to Peoples Self-Help Housing

International Collegiate Business Strategy Competion

A team of seven MBA students from the Orfalea College of Business represented Cal Poly at the 43st Annual International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition held in April in San Diego, California.

In addition to making a broad range of business and ethical decisions, students were also required to complete a comprehensive business plan, annual report, and several other management reports reflecting goal attainment and strategy changes.