Three local schools place at SIFE national competition

Drury University, Ozarks Technical Community College and Southwest Baptist University all earned wins this week at the Students in Free Enterprise U.S. competition.

The competition was held May 10-12 in Philadelphia and brought together the winners of SIFE's U.S. regional competitions. About 90 executives from companies across the country judged the 118 schools, according to a Drury news release.

Drury University took second place overall among four-year schools. Florida's Flagler College was named the national champion and will go on to compete at the SIFE World Cup event, Oct. 4-6 in Berlin.

Drury's team has been to the national competition six times and was named champion three times, in 2001, 2003 and 2005; the team won the World Cup in 2001 and 2003.

OTC earned the second runner-up trophy in its league at this year's event and was the only Missouri community college to reach the national competition, according to an OTC news release. This was the school's third consecutive year competing at that level.

Southwest Baptist University was named first runner-up in its league, according to the SIFE Web site.

Missouri State University and College of the Ozarks also competed at the event but did not place, according to the site.

The competition consisted of a 24-minute presentation of projects that each team completed during the previous year at their schools and respective communities, according to the OTC release. The projects must have been designed to instruct within six criteria areas - success skills, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, business ethics, environmental sustainability and market economics, the release said.[[In-content Ad]]