On behalf of the Professional Communications Club and the Net Impact Club in the full-time MBA program, all part-time MBA students are invited to "Leadership Under Fire." This event is a unique case competition, focused on crisis communication.
Date:
Friday, February 24, 2017
Location: Van Munching Hall, College Park, MD
Schedule:
12:30pm-4:30pm -- Event Introduction & Competition
4:30pm-6:00pm -- Awards & Reception
Students who participate will organize into teams of three and be given a business case, where they will play the roles of a senior management team attempting to lead their company through a major corporate crisis. When you receive the case, you will have three days to draft a press release responding to the crisis. Throughout the three days in between receiving the case and presenting, you will receive random email "updates" on the fluid situation.
At the end of the three days, your "presentation" will actually be a press conference, and will involve a two-minute opening statement, followed by ~13 minutes of questions from a panel of actual DC-area journalists. This panel will consist of representatives from organizations including NBC News, ABC-7, CBS Radio, and WTOP Radio, among others, and will ask questions as they would a real company going through a similar issue (i.e. they will push you -- hard). You will then receive five minutes of feedback from a separate panel of judges.
A maximum of 18 teams will be accommodated, first come, first serve. The participating teams will be split in half, with nine teams presenting in each of two different rooms. Each room's judging panel will select a winning team, which will receive a $900 cash prize.
The schedule for the entire competition will be as follows (all events will take place in Van Munching Hall on the College Park campus):
- Thursday, 2/16, 12:00pm-1:00pm: PR Training Session
- Tuesday, 2/21, 1:00pm-2:00pm: Kickoff & Case Release
- Friday, 2/24, 10:00am: Press Release Submission Deadline
- Friday, 2/24, 12:30pm-4:30pm: Competition!
We understand that many of you work full-time and may not be able to make it to the weekday events. If that's the case, we will email you all the cases at the same time as the kickoff event on
Tuesday, 2/21. But, of course you will need to be there in person to present on 2/24.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to
Kevin Hannigan.
This is one of the most popular events in our program, and we would love to offer the opportunity to MBA students across all of Maryland's programs.
