Mansfield University Students Reach Top 5 in Banking Competition

For the third consecutive year, a team of Mansfield University students has advanced to the final round of the 2022 CSBS Community Bank Case Study Competition. Mansfield is joined in the top five by Iowa State University, James Madison University, Mississippi State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. In 2020, the MU team posted a third place finish in the competition.

Members of the 2022 Mansfield team are Sarah Hart, Hannah Caccia, Seth Anderson, Ethan Allen, and Quanwen Long and advised by business administration faculty Atika Benaddi, Xiaoxuan Ji, and Xia Zhou. The team worked closely with C&N Bank of Wellsboro on the case.

The Case Study Competition, now in its eighth year, is open to undergraduate students in all fields of study as an opportunity to gain valuable first-hand knowledge of the banking industry. This year, the student teams have partnered with local community banks to examine the changes within community banking over the last decade and what to expect in the next 10 years.

The finalists advanced through two rounds of judging and an original pool of 23 participating teams representing 21 universities. The first, second, and third place teams will be announced on July 12 via the CSBS YouTube channel and the CSBS Twitter feed (@CSBSNews). Their work will be published in the annual CSBS Journal of Community Bank Case Studies.

"The big benefit of this competition is the students get to work on real-world issues by applying what they have learned in college and how to do research," Benaddi said. "Some students I work with also get internships at C&N Bank because of these competitions."

The winning team will present its findings to the case study to regulators, academics, and industry leaders at the Community Banking Research Conference held in St. Louis on Sept. 28 and 29.