Kevin Battista, Ashley Perry, and Matthew Ferrer received the $2,000 first place prize sponsored by Ernst & Young.

Undergraduates Kevin Battista, Ashley Perry, and Matthew Ferrer won first place for their team effort in the college's diversity case competition last spring. Battista, of Mechanicsville, Va., and Ferrer, of Chesapeake, Va., are management majors; Perry is an accounting and information systems student from Norfolk, Va.

The team, which received $2,000, earned the highest score for their work on the case question: “Explore different methods and strategies that can be used to increase the underrepresented minority population at Pamplin. Specifically, recommend the most effective strategy that can be implemented at Pamplin to increase the populations of African-American, American-Indian, and Latino/Hispanic students.”

The second-place team of Laurie Manning, of Greensboro, N.C.; Cameron Hart, of Manassas, Va.; and Bethlhem Teshome, of Alexandria, Va., received $1,000. Third-place finishers Christine Damico, of Roanoke, Va.; Estee Rios, of Roseville, Calif.; Eric Poppe, of Oak Hill, Va.; and Ben Yu, of Fairfax, Va., received $500.

Lynette Wood

Lynette Wood, an assistant professor of accounting and information systems who coordinated the competition, said that competitors were also asked to consider how Pamplin students themselves could “be instrumental in recruiting underrepresented minority students,” recruitment plan timelines, best and worst case scenarios, and how much the college would need to improve “to be at par or better than comparable nationally ranked schools in enrollment of underrepresented minorities.”

A total of 14 student teams entered the competition. The event, Wood said, “was designed to provide students an opportunity to develop important professional skills, such as analyzing and responding quickly to complex business issues involving diversity.”

The judges included representatives from several companies. The competition was sponsored by the college and its diversity committee, Business Diversity Center, MBA program, and undergraduate program, as well as the university’s Office for Equity and Inclusion, Ernst & Young, and CSC.

The event is an example of Pamplin’s commitment to diversity programs, Wood said. The college has included diversity-related goals in its strategic plan for several years and has sponsored the diversity committee, comprising faculty and student members, since 1987. In the fall of 1997, it adopted the “Diversity as a Core Value” statement, written by the committee and discussed and approved by Pamplin faculty and staff. More recently, the college created an award for diversity excellence to honor faculty for outstanding contributions to the college’s diversity programs.