THE all-girl team from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, beat four other competing teams to cop first place and the FirstCaribbean International Bank challenge trophy in the UWI/FirstCaribbean International Bank 20098 Case Analysis Competition on campus earlier this month.

This is the third consecutive win for Mona and the first time on home soil as previous competitions were held in Barbados (2007) and Trinidad (2008). Second was the team from UWI Cave Hill and third, UWI St Augustine.

Two teams participated in the competition for the first time – the University of Technology (UTech) and the University of Southern Caribbean, Trinidad.

The competition – a component of the Case Study Development Project developed under a Memorandum of Understanding between FirstCaribbean and the UWI – is designed to develop case writing skills within the university and increase the available regional case studies for use by the study population.

The Mona team, comprising Mehar Alam, Sherica Lewars, Tenneil Rashford and Tifain Taylor, also won the prize for ‘Most Original Case Analysis’.

Taylor was voted ‘Best Overall Presenter’ among all teams.

The Cave Hill team also won the prize for ‘Best Case Analysis’ while ‘Team Spirit’ prizes awarded to one member of each team were won by Kevon Thomas, University of Southern Caribbean; Jason Allen, Utech; Donrick Slocombe, UWI Cave Hill; Mehar Alam, UWI Mona and Jiselle Alexander, UWI St Augustine.

“Your presence here is indicative of the supreme confidence which your tutors have placed in you and the academic achievements you have displayed to be among today’s chosen,” Clovis Metcalfe, managing director of FirstCaribbean said.

Stressing the need for public/private sector partnership, Metcalfe said that he attributed the success of the UWI/FCIB collaborative efforts to the fact that “we share a synergistic view that our organisations are duty-bound to better the lives of Caribbean people in everything we do”.

The University and FirstCaribbean, he told the competing teams, “have invested in you and your peers because, through you, we see all of the positives that will make our region and even better place to grow, live and work”.

Metcalfe said that FirstCaribbean was “extremely proud to have been given the privilege of working with the university in the planning of programmes and initiatives and, to see the tangible benefits of our relationship being reaped among students, faculty and our own staff”.

Mark Figueroa, dean, Faculty of Social Sciences at UWI, noted that the university is putting greater emphasis on skills-based training and less on content-driven learning.

He said that competitions like the UWI/FirstCaribbean Case Analysis Competition “are very valuable as they make for lifelong learning”, and were being used to give students more opportunities to learn skills during their tertiary education.

“It’s no longer about swatting information and regurgitating it at exam time,” Figueroa told the teams as he urged them to learn all they could and share their knowledge with other students on their return to class.

He also encouraged the competing students to take advantage of the networking opportunities presented by the competition.

“Make this a lifelong, life-changing opportunity. Be generous to your competitors – make friends. If you see them doing something wrong, help if you can,” he said.