A team of students from the University of Southern Indiana Romain College of Business welcomed the opportunity to compete at The Econ Games 2024 on Thursday and Friday, March 21-22 at the University of Kentucky. This is the fourth time a USI team has participated in the event.
The team was composed of four students–Ally Buchanan, Logan Koch, Claire Patterson and Levi Willis–and led by faculty advisor Dr. Daria Sevastianova, Associate Professor of Economics. This year’s event included over 100 students from 11 different universities across the country including the University of Delaware, Elon University, University of Kentucky, Miami University (Ohio) and Western Kentucky University.
From having the opportunity to showcase their data analytics skills to having fun spending time with their peers while networking and meeting like-minded individuals from different universities, the trip was full of positive memories for everyone involved.
“Our USI team worked very well. They were focused and all got along–there were fantastic conversations,” said Sevastianova. “It is very clear to me that USI students are doing the work that is on par with students at top research universities.”
Logan Koch added: “I liked seeing how USI measures up against other universities.”
The students had the opportunity to work with Kentucky Realtors, the sponsor of this year’s event. Each team was given a large data set which contained home prices, sales and trends all over the state of Kentucky. The prompt for the student’s presentation was to analyze the data to find the factors that influence housing demand and supply by county, propose policy measures, explore long-term strategies to address housing challenges and summarize their findings and recommendations.
Each team had 24 hours to analyze the data and create their presentations before sharing with a table of judges. The students worked all day Thursday and were crunching data late, past 11 p.m., before finishing up their presentations on Friday morning.
The Econ Games has become known as a “mini-internship because each student gets a chance to practice what an economist does in the workplace in the span of less than two days, all while networking and gaining a greater insight into what life post-graduation can look like.
“The challenge takes a lot of brain power in a short amount of time,” said Claire Patterson.
The team also had the chance to prepare with online practice challenges in Canvas leading up to the competition as they met weekly with Sevastianova before departing to Lexington. Each student felt The Econ Games was a truly gratifying opportunity that helped them gain valuable real-world experience and showcase their skills in front of potential future employers.
“The Econ Games truly prepare you for what work life will be like after school,” said Ally Buchanan.