Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Hughes Member Of SIFE Team

The Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia recently won the championship at the annual SIFE Regional Exposition and Career Opportunity Fair held in Memphis, Tenn.

The SAU SIFE team won both the regional championship and the Success 2000 competition, which is a project that teaches a skill to at-risk adults or students.

"I'm very excited for these students," Darlene Tickle, instructor of business at SAU and advisor to the SAU SIFE team, said. "The students work really well together and worked hard on the project. They are very enthusiastic and that comes across in the presentations. We had some really solid projects.

"We were in the toughest division at the competition and I thought our students responded very well," added Tickle, who was named a Sam M. Walton Free Enterprise Fellow in recognition of her leadership and support of the SIFE program at Southern Arkansas University.

Twenty-six students and two advisors attended the competition from SAU. April Cummings, a senior management major from Stamps and president of SIFE and seven other SIFE members gave the 24 minute multimedia presentation.

Other students giving the presentation were Joel Parrish, a junior marketing major from Camden; Dustin Osborne, a freshman from Benton; Traci Hughes, a senior finance major from Prescott; Roxie Bell, a sophomore marketing major from Camden; Paula Daniels, a senior marketing major from De Soto, Texas; Corey Hunter, a junior management major from McNeil; and DeWayne Burkett, a senior marketing major from Pine Bluff.

Stephen Collier, a junior computer information systems major from Magnolia, and Crystal Mauney, a senior finance major from Norphlet, assisted with the technical equipment during the presentation.

The SIFE students at SAU presented several projects at the competition, including Students Acquiring Knowledge through Economics (SAKE), the Make a Difference Day project, Teach a Child About Business project, the degree framing business, financial responsibility projects and ethics projects.

SAU students presented their outreach programs to a panel of local and national business leaders and entrepreneurs who rated the overall effectiveness of each team's efforts. Students also met with dozens of corporate representatives from the Memphis business community to discuss job opportunities.

The SAU SIFE students will now compete against 18 other regional winners as well as teams from Brazil, Central Asia and Mexico at the Hallmark Cards/SIFE International Exposition and Career Opportunity Fair in Kansas City. The competition will be held in Kansas City, Mo., May 21-23.

"Our students are really excited about advancing to the international competition," said Tickle. "We're looking forward to the challenge."

Now celebrating its 25th year and active on more than 700 college campuses in 48 states and 15 countries, SIFE is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with business and higher education to provide college students the opportunity to make a difference and to develop leadership, teamwork and communication skills through learning, practicing and teaching the principles of free enterprise.

For more information on SIFE you may call 870-235-4166.