By Stephen Burgers
City Times
City College’s Students in Free Enterprise team placed seventh in the national SIFE competition held in Dallas May 6-8.
SIFE is a program at City that allows students to put what they learn about business operations in the class room to use in an actual business setting like their Al a Cart stand on Schwartz Square at City.
“They did a wonderful job, I think our team performed magnificently and I hope we are first next year,” said Professor Leroy Brady.
“Dallas was fun, educational, and it’s great for networking,” said Joesef Shannon, who was a part of the technical support team needed for the presentations.
The team presented nine out of 12 of the current SIFE projects. They stayed at the Hyatt Regency and had time to see sights such as Reunion Tower while in Dallas, chaperoned by Professor Brady and Diane Glow, dean of business, information technology, child development and cosmetology.
“The flash presentation placed seventh out of 196,” said Shannon.
City student Charles Brady, who went for team support said, “This is my first semester with SIFE and it’s been a great learning experience, I had a lot of fun.”
“We met a lot of people from other SIFE teams like Minnesota and we are going to discuss joint projects in the future, some students are hired from these SIFE competitions right into management,” said Shannon.
Brady said the SIFE competition applications will be open to all students next year and students who are selected will need to participate in one SIFE project. He said he hopes more students participate.
“This year they did wonderful, it’s a wonderful group of students,” said Brady, adding “that they look forward to next year when it’s held in Chicago.”
Blue ridge Community College took first place and The University of Arizona took first place for the four-year schools.
SIFE’s mission is to provide college students the best opportunity to make a difference and develop leadership, teamwork and communication skills through learning, practicing and teaching the principles of free enterprise.
SIFE teams are active on more than 1600 campuses in 40 countries around the world. In the United States more than 840 schools are enrolled in SIFE.
Shannon said, “Our school did the best in the west, and that overall it was a lot of fun,” then added, “SIFE for life.”
