The FMU School of Business will send four of its top students to Las Vegas from March 28 to April 1 to compete in a national management case study competition.

The competition is sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of Management (SAM). The management organization will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.

FMU has sent a team to the annual competition for the past five years, having placed four times, though never winning.

The participating students are chosen by the faculty of the business school, and they are senior students in the business school Strategic Management capstone course.

The students are given a corporation to study and prepare a 30-minute presentation on a strategic plan for the next two to three years. The teams will find out which corporation they are to study approximately two months ahead of the competition, and then they will spend countless hours studying the company and preparing the presentation.

Thomas Moye, who graduated from FMU in May with a degree in accounting, went through this process when he participated in last year’s competition.

“The team and I did research into the companies’ financial statements, and then we analyzed the market trends among other common companies and prepared a business strategy that we felt met the demands of the current market,” Moye said.

One advantage for participating FMU students is that SAM adviser Dr. Fred David literally wrote the book on Strategic Management. One of the opportunities for the 2011 students is that a portion of their research will be used as material in the next edition of David’s book.

“It’s good for the students to reinforce class concepts and compete against students from other universities who are studying the same things,” David said.

The 2011 team competed April 1 in Orlando, Fla.

“It was a great experience because it allowed me to test my academic skills and compete against others from different backgrounds,” Moye said.