Essex Fells Caddie Scholar Helps School Win Prestigious Marketing Award
Jack Rupple, a rising junior at the University of Maryland, shared exciting news with the guests of the 2013 Caddie Scholarship Foundation annual meeting. Rupple, a caddie scholar from Essex Fells Country Club, is the recipient of the Colonel John McHugh Memorial Scholarship. More recently, Rupple earned a different and noteworthy award.
This February of 2013, Rupple and his team of four other students from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business placed first in the Wake Forest Marketing Summit. The Summit is a student-run competition that offers both graduate and undergraduate select students the opportunity to apply their marketing skills and creativity to real-world marketing challenges. Wake Forest is host of the world's largest monetary-purse marketing case competition. (View video here.)
The Smith School's tradition at this Summit over the past six years is "to establish a diverse team composition in order to create the perfect combination of talents, experiences, and backgrounds." The winning team included Rupple, a marketing major (and youngest team member), Manas Kulkarni (senior), Lauren Wittig (senior) and Lindsay Djuhadi (junior).
The team arrived in Winston-Salem, N.C. on Thursday, February 21st to early afternoon ceremonies and a tour of the FedEx distribution center. Shortly thereafter, around 8PM, the teams were handed their assigned case. The five undergraduate teams had only 36 hours, until Saturday, the 23rd at 8AM to prepare a PowerPoint presentation answering a very complex (and disclosed) question for 15+ judges representing major companies like IBM, Pepsico, Bridgestone Golf, and the sponsor of the event, FedEx.
"Sleep deprived, delirious, hungry, and anxious, we sat down for dinner [at the Awards Gala]," Rupple explains.
His team from Maryland beat teams representing Northeastern University, University of Pennsylvania, Boston College, and Wake Forest. The reward? $10,000 (and free Windows 8 Surface tablets and an automatic invitation to the 2014 Summit).
"The satisfaction from our hard work paying off was one of the best feelings that I have ever felt in my entire life; the money was secondary at that point," he confesses.
Rupple continues, "the entire experience was extremely humbling because of the feedback from other contestants and the people who helped run the Summit."
"I think I learned a lot of the respectfulness and professionalism from caddieing."
Email Johanna Gavin at johannag@njsga.org to contact Jack Rupple.
Photos courtesy of njbphoto.com
The Marketing Summit: http://www.marketingsummitlive.com/
