Student Life
Students Win Awards in Free Enterprise Competition
"Involvement in SIFE is a great opportunity for our students to help make a difference in our community as well as to turn classroom learning into real-world experiences."
~ Donna Bon
In just its first three months since its organization in January, the Penn State Altoona Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team competed in the SIFE USA Regional Competition in Tarrytown, New York, in April and received both the Rookie of the Year and Champion Awards. The event was one of seventeen SIFE USA Regional Competitions held across the United States in March and April. According to SIFE Advisor Donna Bon, the team had hoped to win the Rookie of the Year award but "we were astounded to win regional champion."
As a champion award recipient at the regional level, the Penn State Altoona SIFE team advances to the 2006 SIFE USA National Competition in Kansas City, Missouri, held in May. The National Competition winners will compete at SIFE World Cup in Paris, France, in September 2006.
The college's SIFE team received its charter in January 2006 and currently has twenty-one student members. Cynthia Wood, instructor in business administration, and Bon, instructor in entrepreneurship, serve as the team's advisors. States Bon, "Involvement in SIFE is a great opportunity for our students to help make a difference in our community, as well as to turn classroom learning into real-world experiences."
SIFE is an international non-profit organization active on more than 2,000 university campuses in more than forty-seven countries. SIFE teams create economic opportunities in their communities by organizing outreach projects that teach market economics, entrepreneurship, personal financial literacy and business success skills, and business ethics. Their projects are judged at competition on creativity, innovation, and effectiveness. Also important is whether the project educated the community versus solely solving a problem or meeting a need.
Altoona's team submitted five projects at the regional competition. The first, promoting success skills, involved SIFE team members working with women recently released from prison to educate them on reentering the workforce. The students helped the women with resume-writing, dressing for success, and interview skills.
The team also worked with the Hollidaysburg Area School District's Frankstown Elementary School Business Club for the second project, focusing on entrepreneurship. SIFE team members taught the elementary students how to start up their own pizza-making business. The Business Club plans to go on a field trip and to make a donation to a charity with the money raised from its business.
With the goal of financial literacy in mind, the SIFE team's third project consisted of workshops for Penn State Altoona students on budget planning and credit responsibility. John McGinnis, associate professor of finance, gave a presentation on this topic and SIFE team members then worked with small groups of students on real-world budget planning. They used a post-graduate starting salary of $36,000 and then worked with students on budgeting their various post-graduate expenses.
The market economics group worked with students from the Juniata Gap Elementary School in Altoona. They used a lemonade stand to demonstrate the principles of market economics. The students were given a pre-test to determine their knowledge of supply, demand, price, and competition. Students learned that with only one lemonade stand, the operators can charge whatever price they want. With the addition of more lemonade stands, price is driven down due to competition. Students were then administered a post-test. The results showed a significant improvement in the students' knowledge of market economics.
The final project, to be completed at a future date, focuses on business ethics. SIFE students plan to question high school students regarding how they would handle specific ethical situations. The SIFE group will then challenge the high school students to think about their ethical decisions and the process they used in reaching that decision. The goal of this project is to have students make the ethical decision regardless of the situation. The high school students will be given a pre- and post-test to assess whether the SIFE group was successful in changing the decisions of the students.