Students from New Jersey, Southern California and Bangladesh Among Winners Who Submitted New Venture Ideas and Analysis of Socially Responsible Businesses
Philadelphia, March 19, 2009 — The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has announced the winners of the Knowledge@Wharton High School (KWHS) Essay Contest, which invited high school students from across the U.S. and the world to submit essays on their choice of two topics: “Starting a New Business” or “Socially Responsible Businesses.” Once it is launched, KWHS will be the latest addition to the Knowledge@Wharton Network, whose mission is to disseminate free business knowledge worldwide. The bi-weekly site will offer high school students and teachers topical articles, videos and podcasts as well as business-related learning simulations and interactive tools.
The contest, which teamed with the Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition as its exclusive media partner and Dell and Southwest Airlines as sponsors, chose four high school students (two each from grades 9-10 and 11-12) as winners in each of two topic categories. The winners are:
“Starting a Business” category
11th/12th Grade Winners:
–First Place to Julie Cheng of Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md., for “The Future of Gloves: You Can Feel It in Your Skin”
–Second Place to Faraz Rahman of Sunbeams School in Bangladesh for “Jatropha: Letting Everybody Win”
9th/10th Grade Winners:
–First Place to Sara Meretab of Montclair High School in Montclair, N.J., for “Shell Shoes: Shoes with Soul”
–Second Place to Kathryn Hopkins of Unionville High School in Kennett Square, Pa., for “Smart Locks: A New Way to Lock Up Your Belongings”
“Socially Responsible Business” category
11th/12th Grade Winners:
–First Place to Matthias Nikaj of Francis Parker School in San Diego, Calif., for “Development from Below: The Grameen Bank Model for Alleviating Poverty”
–Second Place to Sharvani Srivastava of Mira Loma High School in Sacramento, Calif., for “The Milk of Farmers’ Labor: Corporate Social Responsibility Under the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Limited”
9th/10th Grade Winners:
–First Place to Kyle Davidson of Penncrest High School in Media, Pa., for “Golden Arrow Goes Green”
–Second Place to Zoe Zhang of Bergen County Technical Schools in Teterboro, N.J., for “Suiting Up”
Each issue of KWHS will feature articles on business people and trends, and will explore such topics as starting a business, managing money, running a sports team, playing the stock market, going green, finding an internship, becoming a fashion buyer and volunteering for a non-profit, to name a few. All content will be customized for mobile platforms. With more than 21 million students between the ages of 15 and 19 living in the United States and approximately 600 million worldwide, the potential audience for KWHS is large and currently untapped. The goal is to help the coming generation understand business concepts and the role that business plays in driving innovation and social change.
The winners’ names are also posted on the KWHS web site, along with registration and sponsorship information: http://kwhs.wharton.upenn.edu.
About Knowledge@Wharton and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Knowledge@Wharton is a free biweekly online resource that captures knowledge generated at the Wharton School and beyond through such channels as research papers, conferences, speakers, books, and interviews with faculty and other business experts on current business topics. The Knowledge@Wharton network – which includes Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and Indian editions — has more than 1.25 million subscribers worldwide and contains more than 2,000 articles and research papers in its database.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania — founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school — is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. The most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world, Wharton bridges research and practice through its broad engagement with the global business community. The school has more than 4,700 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 10,000 annual participants in executive education programs; and an alumni network of more than 84,000 graduates.