More than 500 people gathered in their business professional to attend an event students dubbed the “Oscars of Provo.” But instead of movie elite earning accolades, it was business students who were honored at the Marriott School of Management closing social.
Attendees mingled and dined during the award ceremony, where winners of the Bateman Awards and the Marriott School Interdisciplinary Case Competition were announced. The night was also headlined by Carine Clark, president and CEO of MartizCX.
“This was an amazing event tonight,” says Lee Perry, Marriott School dean. “We honored some wonderful students, a wonderful faculty member and a great club in the Women in Management Club.”
This year’s Bateman Award winners are Matthew Merrill, an accounting senior from Mapleton, Utah, who was presented the Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award, and Maya Inoue, a second-year MBA student from Honolulu, who won the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Accounting professor Dave Stewart took home the Outstanding Faculty Award, and the Outstanding Student Organization went to the Women in Management Club.
The Bateman Awards were created in 2002 in honor of Merrill J. Bateman, who served as president of BYU from 1996 to 2003 and as dean of the BYU School of Management from 1975 to 1979. He has held several prominent positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including as a member of the Presidency of the Seventy and president of the Provo Utah Temple from 2007 to 2010.
Bateman was in attendance at this year’s banquet and presented the awards to the honorees. He later shared experiences and counsel with the attendees.
“You think over the next few years you’re going to make the decisions in terms of what you do, and you will to some extent,” Bateman said. “But when you get to my age and you look back, you realize that someone in the background has been orchestrating it. Do your very best. When opportunities come, take them. Pray about them, but generally take them.”
This year students were offered a unique opportunity to participate in the new Marriott School Interdisciplinary Case Competition. More than 20 teams participated in the competition which was implemented to build unity across majors and come up with solutions to improve the school.
The winning team developed a way to improve club awareness through a new portal called Club Hub. Winners included John Koelliker, an information systems junior from Salt Lake City; Ian Kahng, a pre-management freshman from Sammamish, Wash.; Jimmy Gillespie, an accounting junior from Houston; Brighton Youd, a finance junior from Portland, Ore.; Lauren Anderson, a marketing junior from Houston; and Nick Kerr, an information systems junior from Taylorsville, Utah.
To finish off the night, attendees heard from Clark, the event’s keynote speaker. Clark earned both her undergraduate degree and MBA from BYU and was named CEO of the Year last year by Utah Business Magazine. In her speech, she offered advice to students starting their professional journey.
“Decide today that you will be a person of tremendous faith, and that you’re going to put that faith to work in every aspect of your life,” Clark said. “Impossible is an opinion, not a fact.”
The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, entrepreneurship, finance, information systems and public management. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,300 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.
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Writer: Alex Burch