Welcome back to Campus Chronicles! This week we’ll share some of the events that have been going at the MIT Sloan campus through reviewing their student newspaper, the MIT Fifteen.
Earlier this fall, the MIT Sloan Sales Club provided MBA students with the chance to learn about sales skills through hosting the 3rd Annual International Sales Competition. A record-high 150 MBA candidates from MIT and 13 other top business schools in the U.S. attended this three-round competition event. Three representatives from each business school competed in the first round, with individuals and groups both competing in the last two rounds. Students from MIT, Harvard, Tuck, and Columbia took home the highest scores for their sales pitches, judged by event sponsors Google, SalvesGravy.com, GALLUP Consulting, and SAP, Inc.
Competitors in this year’s MIT $100K Elevator Pitch Contest (EPC) started off the three-contest MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition with a bang, and not just because of its space age theme. With emcees dressed in astronaut costumes, this year’s competition had 250 students in attendance from MIT and other top U.S. schools. Out of the ten finalists from six separate tracks (Energy, Life Science, Development, Mobile, Web/IT, and Products & Services) two had the chance to give 60-second elevator pitches. The grand prize winner and recipient of $5,000 was Rouzbeh Shahsavari, an MIT Ph.D. student promoting his idea for nano-engineered concrete that is twice as strong and has half the amount of CO2 emissions as standard concrete, as well as being less expensive. Later this year students have the chance to attend and participate in the Executive Summary Contest and Business Plan Contest to look forward to, the second two contests in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.
This semester 38 MIT students had the chance to travel to Iceland and learn from representatives from the Central Bank of Iceland, where they discussed the government’s actions regarding the country’s current economic situation. Students also visited Orkuveita Reykjavikur (OR), a geothermal energy company and learned about the environmental benefits of this type of energy use, as well as visited one of the company’s production plants. The trip also included sight-seeing trips to the National Museum of Iceland, the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa, and the Gullfoss waterfall, known as the queen of Iceland’s waterfalls, as well as exploring some Icelandic cuisine including whale meat, shark, and puffin.
