Proud…the one word I can think of that truly describes how I feel about our school, and is a feeling I am sure many students share with me. At JDC West this past January, during the opening ceremonies I looked up and saw the Beedie School of Business logo flash on the screen for the first time since the school had been named. It was at that moment that I realized how proud I was to be a Beedie student, and I think I can speak for everyone on our team whenI can say we all had goose bumps.
Following JDC West, our team returned to SFU with 2 trophies that our Athletics and Social teams worked extremely hard for. However, the morale of the team was low as many of our teams marginally missed placing in their respective academic categories. Looking back, every competitor on our team put everything on the table that weekend. It just came down to the fact that the team needed to try something new, rather than relying on the same training methods implemented years before. In fact, those methods which were established when SFU won the title of School of the Year in 2007, were no longer applicable to the competition. Other schools had the advantage as they had been continuously revamping the ways they prepared their teams.
It was on that quiet bus ride from the hotel to the airport during our journey home from JDC West 2012 in Edmonton that I began thinking. I was, and continue to be a proud Beedie Student, which is what fuelled my decision to attempt take this team back to the top. On February 4, I was selected along with my close friend, Joel Thom, to lead the 2013 SFU JDC West team as a Co-Captain. 10 months later, here we are with our 46-student team, and since February, we have never looked back.
This year, we have set expectations high for all competitors, we’re working on recreating what it means to be a part of JDC West, attracted the support reputable alumni and faculty members to our coaching team, and have scrapped old training techniques while implementing new ones. As we learn in many business classes, there is a high risk associated to major organizational change, and we realize this.
Only 50 people will attend the competition in January, but we represent all the students at the Beedie School of Business amongst the best universities, and the brightest students in Western Canada. Backed by the support of our fellow students, we will rise to the top and make Beedie proud. I encourage my peers to BE Engaged and support YOUR team at events like Chillin’ 4 Charity, BE Driven by learning more about how you can get involved in case competitions, and be a proud representative of the Beedie School of Business.