Eller College of Management Welcomes Arizona Community Colleges to ACCE Competition
On April 5, the Eller College of Management welcomed students from community colleges across Arizona to the Arizona Community College Excellence (ACCE) Case Competition.
The ACCE Case Competition is a one-day competition that Eller undergraduate programs put on for prospective transfer students from Arizona Community Colleges or students looking to gain more experience in case competitions.
Each school or campus brings a team(s) of four to five students, including at least one faculty mentor. Participants are nominated by a faculty mentor. This year, four community colleges participated in the competition with five teams from Pima Community College, two teams from Chandler Gilbert Community College, one team from Scottsdale Community College and four teams from Arizona Western Community College—totaling 12 teams and 50 participants.
Every year, the case prompt—developed by an Eller corporate partner—revolves around a real-life business problem that students must create a solution for. The Eller corporate partner at this year’s case competition was Paradox. Established in 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Paradox is building the world’s leading conversational recruiting software aimed at driving automation with a human touch.
For the case, student teams were tasked with acting as consultants for Paradox. Their objective was to create and present strategies aimed at effectively engaging with and raising awareness of Paradox among lower-division and transfer-bound community college students. Students were required to consider the following factors:
- How can Paradox stand out as an employer of choice for top talent?
- What kind of messaging and communication channels does the audience prefer?
- Can Paradox leverage its own product offering when engaging with students?
- How can Paradox stay in touch with these students over the course of their collegiate career?
- Paradox’s time and monetary commitments.
Student teams had three hours to work on their presentations and solutions, which they then presented to a panel of judges from Paradox.
The green team from Pima Community College won the case competition, followed by the team from Scottsdale Community College in second place and the red team from Pima Community College in third.
The ACEE creates opportunities for community college students to not only get experience solving business problems but also to start networking with other students, staff, faculty, and real-life business professionals.