MBA students excel in business competition

A student team from UIndy’s Saturday Executive MBA program has scored in the top 1 percent among more than 1,300 teams in a national business simulation competition.

Greg Crafts, Justin Libak, Brian McIntire and Adejare Windokun were students this summer in MBA 690, a capstone course intended to tie together the full range of business principles learned in the program. One-third of the course grade, instructor Dave Brokaw said, is based on the outcome of a Capsim online simulation, which sets up virtual companies in a specific industry and requires participating teams to interpret data and make decisions about product lines, production, pricing, marketing, facilities and other aspects of making a business profitable.

“Whatever you can imagine in the manufacturing world, it’s there,” said Brokaw, who is director of technology operations for Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance and has taught part-time at UIndy for about 10 years.

Each weekly round of Capsim competition represents one year in the life of the company. After a standard run of eight rounds ending earlier this month, this team ranked in the 99th percentile, the highest score Brokaw can recall among his students.

“I’ve had some excellent teams,” he said. “These guys had it down to a science.”

The director of Graduate Business Programs, Assistant Professor Steve Tokar, says the team’s success points to the rigorous nature and the practical value of earning a UIndy degree.

“This is a very quantitative MBA program,” he said. “This is not fluff.”

More info on UIndy’s Graduate Business Programs is here.