Drucker School MBA Team Takes Fourth Place in Net Impact Renewable Energy Competition

Claremont, CA, March 04, 2010 --(PR.com)-- A team of four MBA students from the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University won fourth place at this year’s Ninth Annual Leeds Net Impact Case Competition in Boulder, Colorado. The event, held on February 19–20, attracted top-rated business schools and future industry leaders to the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder for a weekend of presentations and judging. The competition was an opportunity to bring together students, executives and businesses that share a common commitment to sustainable business practices.

The Drucker School team was comprised of four MBA students with a passion for environmental issues and sustainability initiatives: Julia Baumgaertner, Jay Hinton, Sarah Dale Schwald, and Joshua Schare. They were selected as one of 20 semifinal teams to travel to the competition from an original pool of more than 80 entrants nationwide who participated in an earlier case round last November.

“This was such a great learning experience for all of us,” said team member Joshua Schare. “In order to compete strongly in the case, we had to dive into a ton of research about renewable energy, regulations, and green technology. It was a crash course in sustainability with real-world business issues to solve.”

This year’s case revolved around the Colorado division of Xcel Energy, a privately held utility company with operations in eight states, and revenue of more than $9 billion annually. In response to their request for a creative solution for revenue-generating renewable energy technology, the Drucker School team developed an innovative solution based on harnessing the power from windmills and storing that energy in Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) sites to take advantage of Colorado’s preexisting mines and help the company control for peak/non-peak intermittency. The team will present a version of its case competition presentation and research to the Drucker School’s “Topics in Sustainability” course on Saturday, March 6.

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The Drucker School of Management
The Drucker School’s programs and degrees are unique in their focus on management as a liberal art, rather than specific concentrations on core business functions such as accounting, finance, or marketing. At Drucker, students are challenged to do good and do well, and the curriculum reflects a value-based approached to management education. Along with its sister institution, The Drucker Institute, the Drucker School is committed to advancing effective management, ethical leadership and social responsibility in organizations in all sectors of society, locally, nationally and globally.

Net Impact
Net Impact is an international nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world.

Leeds Net Impact Case Competition
The Leeds Net Impact Case Competition is the premier case format competition built around businesses facing sustainability challenges, while succeeding financially. The competition brings together top-rated business schools and future industry leaders to Boulder, Colorado for a two-day event each year.