Uncategorized April 6, 2020
On Saturday afternoon, 47 UT Austin students competed online in the finals of the first annual George Kozmetsky Memorial Student Challenge, a student team competition requiring students to investigate small or remote Texas cities and come up with creative ideas to increase prosperity and quality of life in those communities. The event is organized by the IC² Institute and named in honor of the founder of the institute.
To prepare for the competition, students formed into teams of 4 to 5 members. Each team needed to be diverse — representing at least two different UT Austin colleges and including at least two undergraduate students and at least two upper-division or graduate students. Although the diversity requirement meant students had to reach out to work with students they didn’t know, most students felt their teams were stronger for it. The teams had over a month to get to know a particular Texas community, but they were given only a day and a half to prepare a recommendation and presentation on a surprise situation for their town.
“The students did an incredibly sophisticated job of analyzing their communities and providing suggestions based on the scenario they were given. Their answers to the questions posed by the judges demonstrated the depth of knowledge they developed.” – Art Markman, Executive Director of the IC² Institute
Student teams who placed first, second, or third in the competition were awarded cash prizes, including $8,000 to be split between the members of the winning team. Although the monetary award may have been an incentive, the most common reason students gave for wanting to participate was “I want to challenge myself and improve my skills.” The cash awards were made possible by a generous gift from Jordan and Laila Scott.
Teams were allowed to choose the Texas community they wanted to study — as long as the community was under 150,000 in population and outside of Texas’ major urban corridors. The teams that made it to the finals represented cities as small as Menard (pop. < 1,500) and as large as Midland (pop. > 100,000). The other cities investigated by finalists were La Grange, Tyler, Longview, Harlingen, Edinburg, Slaton, and Glen Rose.
A couple of the teams made trips to their towns to talk directly with residents before social distancing made everything but online and telephone communication impossible. The Menard team traveled to the town and conducted a S.W.O.T. workshop (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) with residents and town leaders. Scott Winton, is a Menard team member and a grad student in Community and Regional Planning. “The people of Menard really love their town,” he said. “The report generated from the challenge can be a tool for consideration as they plot their future.”
Nicole Domingo, a sophomore in finance, worked with the La Grange team and also made the trip to her community, where her team conducted sixteen interviews.
“Rural towns just used to be a tiny part of my road trip routine, passing them by. But thanks to this challenge, I have seen some of the hidden wonders that rural towns in the state of Texas have to offer. Connecting with the residents in the area, I’ve definitely felt southern hospitality at its finest!” – Nicole Domingo
The competition was judged by four experts in community development: Coker; Jordan Scott, a community advocate and investor from Austin; Felipe Gonzalez, Principal Technologist for H-E-B; and Rick Rhodes, who serves as the Rural Engagement Coordinator for the Texas Rural Funders Collaborative.
“I was happy to participate in the Challenge,” Scott noted. “We had the chance to see ten presentations from cross-disciplined groups of students looking to lift up rural Texas with proposed initiatives for rural entrepreneurship and economic development. Their ideas were varied and creative, shining a light on new ways Texas’ long rural tradition can grow and flourish.”
List of 2020 IC² Institute Student Challenge finalists
Winners of the George Kozmetsky Memorial Student Challenge Prize
- First prize winners: Jonathan Du, Matthew Piotrowicz, Iann Karamali, Joshua Klein, and Thomas Adkins (Harlingen team).
- Second prize winners: Heath Edwards, Kaitlyn Harris, Kathryn Johansen, Scott Winton, and Jocelyn Yao (Menard team).
- Third prize winners: Amy Simpson, Sashank Macharla, Alexandra Byrnes, and Nicole Domingo (La Grange team) and Evan Pan, Shashwat Pandey, Aniket Matharasi, Chris Morphis, and Kisara Dang (Tyler team).
Other finalist teams
- Representing Edinburg: Mahija Ginjupalli, Stephanie Guo, Maharajni Perla, Oishika Das, and Roxanna Attar
- Also representing Edinburg: Victor Torres, Shaena Reyes, Alyssa Garcia, and Alfredo Huitron
- Representing Glen Rose: Ashley Hang, Vincent Luu, Victoria Martin, and Brandon Lowell
- Representing Longview: Angela Yang, Basel Cheema, Peter Huang, Sarah Fung, and Jay Anand
- Representing Midland: Michael Montez, Mahan Shrestha, Brittany Dominics, Abigail Partridge, and Maduabuchi Akoma
- Representing Slaton: Harshika Jha, Aarushi Khandelwal, Shayan Ali, Pooja Pisharoody, and Ananya Dwivedi
Updated May 14, 2025