Winner Selected For 2004 ABC Student Writing Contest

The Student Awards Committee is pleased to announce the winner of the third annual ABC Writing Contest: Adam Tindel. Adam’s entry was submitted by Dr. Heidi Schultz, Adam’s business communication instructor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In a blind review, Adam’s entry was judged the best of five finalists among 24 entries; and he will be awarded a certificate and a check for $300. Congratulations, Adam!

Adam’s $300 award is possible through the generosity of authors Mary Munter and Paul Argenti and two anonymous donors. An additional $300 stipend from the anonymous donors will be offered to the winner to attend the 2004 ABC Convention in Cambridge. We are grateful for these donors’ contributions and we thank them for their generosity and support for this contest.

The contest was open to undergraduate business students who worked independently to write a response to this year’s case and whose entries were submitted by their instructors. All contest entries were read and ranked by Student Awards Committee members who worked independently to identify the top five student entries. Then, the top five entries were read and ranked by businesspersons who worked independently to identify the winning response. All readers used a holistic scale similar to that used for the GMAT to rank the entries and all entries were coded so readers did not know the identity of the authors or instructors.

The contest case for 2003 was adapted from a case written by Gayle Vogt, PhD, at California State University at Fullerton. Each entrant responded to the case with two documents: (1) a letter to shareholders addressing the status of current legal issues and (2) a memo to the writer’s instructor describing the rationale for the letter.

The ABC Student Awards Committee is currently reviewing cases for the 2005 Student Writing Contest. If you have an original case that you would like to submit for our consideration, please e-mail it to Carol White at drcswhite@aol.com.

ABC Student Awards Committee

Cathy Dees, DeVry University
Dan Dieterich, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point -
Cindy Drexel, Western State College of Colorado
Bob Stowers, College of William and Mary -
Kris Walker, Tennessee Technological University
Yunxia Zhu, UNITEC Institute of Technology

Businessperson Judges for the Writing Contest

Sue Jolly, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.
Henny Marske, Unigroup Worldwide
Karl Keller, Communication Partners
Judy Cartwright, Natural Choice
Nancy Erickson, Erickson & Associates

Finalists for the ABC Writing Contest
(Listed alphabetically by student’s last name)

Student Name	Teacher's Name	School
Brandon Crosser	Carol Roever	Missouri Western State College
Christopher White	G. Jay Christensen	California State University, Northridge
Gabe Wishnie	Carol Roever	Missouri Western State College
Gregory Yoshikawa	Jolanta Aritz	University of Southern California

The ABC Student Awards Committee thanks everyone who helped promote the contest, entered students, read entries, or helped in other ways to make this year’s contest a success! Thank you!