For the first time in 12 years, Queen’s Masters of Public istration (MPA) students brought home the gold at an annual case competition.
The MPA student team beat out 11 of Canada’s public policy schools to win the gold medal at the National Public istration Case Competition between Feb. 14 to 24. The competition was run by the Canadian Association of Programs in Public istration (CAPPA) with the Institute of Public istration of Canada (IPAC).
The annual competition brings together the brightest and most excellent Canadian public istration students across Canada to compete in debates about relevant policy matters that mirror today’s world. The team included Kokul Sathiyapalan, MPA ’24, Sally Twin, MPA ’24, Sarah Homsi, MPA ’24, Thomas Goyer, MPA ’24, and George Melika-Abusefien, MPA ’24, while being coached by Eugene Lang and Jianyuan (Andy) Hu.
Winning the gold medal signifies the value of Queen’s MPA program, the team said. The win is a testament to their work ethic and ion for their studies.
“This signifies and is reflective of the spirit of the program. We’re not the biggest policy program, we don’t have the most money. What we have a lot of is ion, curiosity, and team cohesion,” Homsi said in an interview with The Journal.
Their road to victory was not easy. This year, teams were presented with a “wicked problem” concerning Federal IT procurement, an area the team was unfamiliar with. Given only a week to conduct an analysis and propose recommendations, the team put hours into drafting their policy proposal. The experience taught them how to work effectively as a group.
“The final seven days before the competition, we were meeting for long hours every day, usually coming in late morning, early afternoon and staying late at school usually, five to as late as eight O’Clock at night,” Goyer said in an interview with The Journal.
At these late-night meetings, the team “ripped to shreds” their ideas until they were satisfied with them. The ability to critique each other’s work was their greatest asset, Melika-Abusefien said.
Under extreme pressure, they came together and turned ideas into gold.
“This victory is the result of this team and it’s the result of the School of Policy Studies. I’m incredibly thankful I had the opportunity to be involved with this. It’s going to be a real highlight of my experience at Queen,” Goyer said.
The team advised incoming students interested in the competition to trust their process and dedicate themselves to the work.
“It’s a battle of attrition at the end of the day, so I think it’s rigorous and it is going to be tough. But it’s also a fun process,” Sathiyapalan said.
Corrections
A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled George Melika-Abusefien’s last name. Incorrect information appeared in the March 8 issue of The Queen’s Journal.
The Journal regrets the error
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