Winners Selected For 2005 ABC Student Writing Contest

The Student Awards Committee is pleased to announce the winners of the fourth annual ABC Writing Contest:

• 1st place: Courtney R. Swartwout, Western Carolina University; Dr. Rita Noel, instructor
• 2nd place: Adam Kling, Missouri Western State College; Carol Roever, instructor
• 3rd place: George Stovall Moore IV, Georgia State University; Jan Costello, instructor

As 1st place winner, Ms. Swartwout will receive $300; as 2nd place winner, Mr. Kling will receive $200; and as 3rd place winner, Mr. Moore will receive $100. These awards are made possible through the continuing generosity of authors Mary Munter and Paul Argenti and through publisher Houghton Mifflin, a new sponsor for the 2005 contest. We are grateful for these donors’ contributions and we thank them for their 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. This year’s 24 entries were read and ranked by Student Awards Committee members who worked independently to identify the top student entries. Then, the top student entries, as identified by the Student Awards Committee readers, were read and ranked by businesspersons who worked independently to identify the three winning responses. 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, instructors, or schools.

The case study for 2005 was adapted from a case written by Dr. Dale Cyphert, Assistant Professor, Department of Management, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA – thank you, Dale, for submitting this interesting case. Each entrant responded to the case with three documents: (1) a letter handling a customer service complaint from a disgruntled customer; (2) a memo to the organization’s sales staff about customer service; and (3) a memo to the writer’s instructor describing the rationale for the response (for information only; not evaluated).

The ABC Student Awards Committee is currently reviewing cases for the 2006 Student Writing Contest. If you have an original case that you would like to submit for our consideration, please e-mail it to Cathy Dees at cdees@devry.edu by mid-May so we can adapt and post the 2006 case by June 1.

ABC Student Awards Committee

• Carol White, Chair - Georgia State University
• 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, New Zealand

Businessperson Judges for the Writing Contest

• Judy Cartwright, Principal, RW & JR Cartwright Consultancy Ltd., Auckland, NZ
• Kelly Johnson, Executive Director Marketing Support, General Freight Services, Inc., Atlanta, GA
• Sue Jolly, Consultant, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., Webster Grove, MO
• Karl Keller, Communication Partners, Evanston, IL
• Nancy Erickson, Communications Consultant, Erickson & Associates, Boulder, CO

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

Student Name Teacher's Name School

Student Name	Teacher's Name	School
Jamison Benner	Sharon Apollo	Eastern Michigan University
Keshara Best	Patricia Harms	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kathrin Carpenter	Carol Roever	Missouri Western State College
Stephanie Kop	Jolanta Aritz	University of Southern California
Aarti Maheshwari	Patricia Harms	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Scott Reed	Jay Christensen	California State University, Northridge

The ABC Student Awards Committee thanks everyone who promoted the contest, who encouraged students to submit their work, who read and evaluated entries, or who helped in other ways to make this year’s contest a success! The Committee also gives a special thanks to authors Mary Munter and Paul Argenti and publisher Houghton Mifflin whose generosity made it possible for us to recognize the exceptional writing of three students this year. Thank you!