maybe FEMA will send a team next year?

A hurricane has slammed into the coast of Central America. The Red Cross is gearing up to deliver communication equipment, medical supplies, food and drinking water to the stricken region. Your job is to coordinate the response, working with governments, relief agencies, and donors to figure out the quickest way to deliver those supplies ... and to do it better than the other teams.

The other teams? Those would be the other eight groups of students competing in the 9th Annual FedEx Freight International Graduate Logistics Case Competition. At the event, nine teams of five or six MBA students were given 24 hours to come up with an emergency response plan. Winners were selected through two rounds of judging.

Teams from Pennsylvania State University, Michigan State University and Germany's Darmstadt University of Technology captured the top three places in the February competition, which was sponsored by the Supply Chain Management Research Center in the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business along with FedEx Freight and other corporate sponsors.

The top three finishers were awarded $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. But it wasn't about the money. It was about the experience ... and perhaps the jobs. The competition's judges are executives from companies like FedEx and J.B. Hunt and always come with an eye out for new talent.