Attendees of the RIMS’ Riskworld annual conference in Chicago will have an opportunity to meet a cohort of aspiring risk management professionals, who are participating in a global university competition.
Teams from eight colleges around the world will compete in the Spencer-RIMS Student Risk Management Challenge that asks college students to form a risk management report based on a case study. The competition is put on by the Spencer Educational Foundation, a nonprofit that provides grants to students interested in pursuing a career in risk management.
The seven-month-long competition culminates at RIMS, where the top eight teams will present in a preliminary round on May 4. The advancing top three teams will compete in a final presentation round on May 5. A $10,000 award will go to the winning team, while second-place receives $7,500 and third-place receives $5,000. Spencer also pays for each team’s air fare, hotel stay and conference registration.
This year’s competition featured 61 universities from 16 countries. The eight teams competing at RIMS consist of three American universities (DePauw, Saint Joseph’s and Wisconsin-Madison) and colleges from India, Nepal, Australia and South Africa.
Students were given a case study of the climate risks affecting Huntington, West Virginia and were asked to act as risk management consultants to address the issues at hand. The first part of the challenge asked students to identify the top three to five risks that the city faces specifically due to climate change. The second part asked them how the city can protect itself against those risks and how would they go about implementing their solutions.
Tandeka Nomvete, director, external engagement at Spencer, said the challenge is designed to give students real-world risk management experience that prepares them for the kind of work they might encounter as a professional.
“It’s quite a complex problem, right? We’re asking them to identify the top issues related to climate change,” Nomvete said. “We’re asking them to present the solutions, and then we take it a step further and we’re asking them, how would you actually go about implementing all of these solutions that you’ve come up with? So they truly are acting as risk management consultant.”
Teams of four students per school will present their findings in front of a panel of risk management judges, formed primarily of chief risk management officers from various organizations and companies. Teams present for 20 minutes, followed by a 10 minute Q&A session where they’ll answer questions from the judges.
