The SMU Cox BBA Negotiation Team emerged victorious last Friday in the National Undergraduate Negotiation Competition, hosted by Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. Of the 18 teams that took part in the virtual competition, the Cox team came in first place. “This is the third time out of the four times the event has taken place that Cox came in No. 1 and the year we didn’t make it to first place, we came in second,” says Assistant Dean of Diversity and Adjunct Professor of Negotiations Steve Denson.
His students, Gilmore Aarestad, BBA ’21, and Emily Abdalla, BBA ’22, went head-to-head with the teams from Tufts University and the US Air Force Academy to make it to finals, where they defeated the Nichols College team from Massachusetts. Aarestad is also the winner of the 2021 Management and Organizations Department’s Outstanding Senior Award and Distinguished Strategy Student Award. Abdalla is a BBA and Hilltop Scholar, Stampede Guide and Class of 2022 Representative for Campus Services Student Advisory Panel. As a team, Aarestad and Abdalla were assigned to compete against randomly assigned teams from around the world.
