Cheshire Professor Leads QU Business Students to Win

David Cadden, a Cheshire resident and professor of management at Quinnipiac University, led a team of four business students to victory in this year's MikesBikes simulation.

SWAG Cycles, a team comprised of School of Business students Matthew Golden of Walpole, Mass., Malgorzata Kielbowicz of New Britain, Spencer Mannion of Brookfield and Alison Scharr of East Granby, were honored Nov. 28 for beating 75 Quinnipiac teams participating.

Each fall, all incoming freshmen in the School of Business take the course Introduction to Business, which relies heavily on the MikesBikes business simulation software to reinforce business concepts in an experiential learning environment.

Student teams make business decisions for their simulated bike manufacturing company that get progressively more complicated throughout the semester. By the end of the simulation, student teams decide everything from marketing strategies to launching new products, manufacturing capacity, quality control and financing decisions.

Student team performance in the MikesBikes simulation is measured by the resulting shareholder value created by their company. Each year, the winners’ names are engraved on a plaque that hangs outside the dean’s office in the Lender School of Business Center.

The winning team had the highest shareholder value among the Quinnipiac teams competing. In addition, Golden, Kielbowicz, Mannion and Scharr placed 38th overall from a field of more than 6,500 teams from universities around the world.

Dennis Gain, CEO of Smartsims, the company that created the MikesBikes simulation software, visited Quinnipiac to help Matthew O’Connor, dean of the School of Business, present the plaque to the winning team.