During the Carolina Case Challenge (CCC), teams of undergraduate business students have just eight hours to research, craft and present a detailed solution to a real-world business problem.
Co-sponsored this year by Brex and Deloitte, the challenge represents the type of work awaiting UNC Kenan-Flagler students pursuing consulting and the skillsets required to succeed.
The teams don’t have a clue about the case they’ll be working on until organizers accompany them to a work room and release the case. From there on, every minute counts.
The cases in the competition are not hypothetical.
“Every client we’ve ever had has given us a real business problem that they are dealing with,” said Amy Bugno, director of career development and employer relations at UNC Kenan-Flagler and faculty advisor for the CCC. “They get an army of business students at their disposal.”’
This year’s case came from Brex, a financial technology company focusing on startup support: “Where should we expand globally: Japan, Brazil or the United Kingdom?”
Before this year’s CCC, Olivia Pirouz ’25 didn’t know what a case competition was. She was interested in consulting but wasn’t sure if the field was right for her.
“I had no clue what to expect, but it ended up being the best experience, probably the highlight of my year,” said Pirouz. “It was an eye-opening experience. It’s a crucial steppingstone in my business path.”
Businesses and professionals who participate in CCC remember students’ names and faces — and their drive.
“This year on the judge’s panel,” said Bugno, “one of the recruiters said to me, ‘I want the names of everyone on this team. I would hire them tomorrow.’”
Read the complete Carolina Story
array(3) {
[0]=>
object(WP_Post)#8444 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(7119)
["post_author"]=>
string(2) "25"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 11:36:20"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 15:36:20"
["post_content"]=>
string(2121) "[embed]https://youtu.be/lkDOOJUDV9Q[/embed]
Collards sizzle in a pan on a hot stove before a lid stifles their chorus. Cutting boards, vegetables, and dishes crowd the countertop in a small apartment kitchen. A nearby sweet potato pie exudes the warming aromas of cinnamon, allspice and bourbon, filling the room with its perfume each time the oven door opens.
“If apple pie is the most American pie, then sweet potato pie is the most Black American pie,” said Bailey Benson ’23, a Morehead-Cain Scholar majoring in food studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.
She pulls the pie from the oven to cool, then dons plastic gloves and reaches for a bag of chicken that has been marinating in a sweet-and-spicy peanut sauce. Her roommate, Serenity Bennett, clicks off the stove dial and removes the pan of collards. The mouth-watering meal is accompanied by sweet potato cubes, couscous and a spicy margarita — all recipes included in Benson’s cookbook.
“An Afrofuturist’s Guide to Cooking” is her undergraduate thesis project. Benson’s life experiences thus far culminate in pages that connect the reader to not only food, but also a rich history of Black Americans descended from people displaced by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This displacement, known as the Black diaspora, occurred throughout the world, but Benson focuses on the borders of the U.S. for her project.
Benson weaves together art, music, recipes, interviews and historical documents to tell the story from the Black perspective, using her own life experiences to inform her process.
“It started as a cookbook,” she said, “but now I describe it as an educational celebration of Black joy.”
Her approach to the cookbook makes the recipes and cultural history more accessible, and she hopes to eventually publish it to help others relearn their past in an inclusive way.
“I want everybody to be able to not only read it and enjoy it, but also cook from it and have a good meal.”
Read more about Benson’s project…"
["post_title"]=>
string(22) "A Recipe for Black Joy"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(34) "This cookbook is more than recipes"
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(22) "a-recipe-for-black-joy"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 11:36:20"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 15:36:20"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(31) "https://stories.unc.edu/?p=7119"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
[1]=>
object(WP_Post)#8442 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(7117)
["post_author"]=>
string(2) "25"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 11:32:42"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 15:32:42"
["post_content"]=>
string(2109) "
Lindsey James came to Carolina to get her PhD in 2005 and never left.
Eighteen years later the chemist runs a lab in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy exploring medicinal chemistry and epigenetics with the goal of making strides in cancer care and treatment. It’s a method of research defined as translational — bridging the gap between promising early-stage science and the development of products and services that benefit society.
James and her team develop small molecules that target specific proteins believed to play roles in the development of cancers. These small-molecule tools could be useful against an array of cancers.
The continuous development of new molecules requires funding and resources. This part of project development diverts time and energy from conducting the research itself. Grant writing and editing along with back-and-forth communications with funding agencies can take months, even years.
James has found great success in internal Carolina grants, built to reduce the struggle in obtaining funds to advance research. She has secured funding and support from multiple other research translation resources at Carolina, all the while receiving support and guidance from AdvanTx, an initiative to advance therapeutics research from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.
While James currently has two major National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants that sustain her work, these additional Carolina resources have given her a break from applying for more federal funding.
“The research space I’m in is competitive,” James said. “I was worried that if I only focused on securing NIH funding then I may lose my window of discovery because it takes a long time for NIH grants to get reviewed, approved and funded.”
Read the complete Carolina Story…"
["post_title"]=>
string(20) "Found in Translation"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(55) "Carolina funding helps keep chemist at the cutting-edge"
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(20) "found-in-translation"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 11:32:42"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-07 15:32:42"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(31) "https://stories.unc.edu/?p=7117"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
[2]=>
object(WP_Post)#8474 (24) {
["ID"]=>
int(7111)
["post_author"]=>
string(2) "25"
["post_date"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-05 13:19:34"
["post_date_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-05 17:19:34"
["post_content"]=>
string(2578) "
Organizational experts at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School emphasize four pillars of teamwork: identification with group and mission, trust, distributed expertise and shared leadership.
Building these pillars takes time and lots of positive interactions as a team. For the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, also known as DigitalNC, that means dedication to their mission as well as time for taste-testing Oreos and sharing pet photos. The team — eight University Libraries employees in the Wilson Special Collections Library in Chapel Hill plus three Elizabeth City State University employees in a satellite office — are there for the work and for each other.
They work hard to preserve the state’s heritage. They have digitized more than 630,000 newspapers, yearbooks, photos and other items from 320 partners in all 100 counties. Nearly half a million people visited the online DigitalNC archive last year alone.
“It’s such a great team,” said Kristen Merryman, digital projects librarian. “You can be transparent about what’s going on, and you know you’re going to receive empathy and support.”
That mutual respect radiates out to the center’s relationship with its partners statewide, team members said. In April, the Office of the Provost recognized their partnership with the State Library of North Carolina with an Engaged Scholarship Award.
Nominator Judy Panitch, director of library communications, praised the staff’s generosity, openness and inclusion. “No partner is too small; no document too minor; no user unimportant,” she wrote. “NCDHC’s values include the belief that ‘community history and culture have the power to enrich the lives of all North Carolinians.’ Every aspect of the program enables and promotes these encounters.”
“Our mission is to support cultural heritage organizations around the state in their goals for access to their collections,” said Lisa Gregory, the program coordinator who supervises the team. “Everyone who works for the center has a passion for access to information and the cultural heritage mission. That helps make us a strong team.”
Read more about the DigitalNC initiative…"
["post_title"]=>
string(16) "A Shared Purpose"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(45) "Teaming up to document North Carolina history"
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["ping_status"]=>
string(6) "closed"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(16) "a-shared-purpose"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-05 13:19:34"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2023-06-05 17:19:34"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(31) "https://stories.unc.edu/?p=7111"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
}
Related Stories
