Nicholls SHRM Places at State Competition and Remains Undefeated

The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) at Nicholls State University has placed at the 2022 Louisiana State Case Competition and has done so since 2016.

Melanie Boudreaux has been Faculty Advisor for ten years and the group started competing in 2016. This year, Nicholls SHRM had an undergraduate and a graduate team participate in the state competition where the graduate team won first and the undergraduate team won second. The students who participated were:

• Graduate Team:

• • Miles Hill
  • Cailey Rousseau (team captain)
  • Brianna Simon
  • Austin Trahan
  • David Vial

• Undergraduate Team:

• • Caleigh Adams (team captain)
  • Charley Cancienne
  • Caroline Delaune
  • Sarah Oubre

“I’m very proud of them. It’s just a testament to all of the classes that they’re taking here at Nicholls,” Boudreaux said, “We have a really great program at the College of Business and it’s kind of a hidden gem.” According to the department’s website, Nicholls Human Resources courses focus on staffing, training, and development practices as well as techniques for evaluating job performance and compensating workers. The program is heavy with problem-solving, implementation using data found during research, and presentations. It’s these courses that help prepare them for the State Case Competition. Boudreaux explained a senior-level case class that she teaches that mimics the competition, “They should be very familiar because I set my class up like the case competition, so they have to do pretty much the same rubric and everything they have to do for the case competition in the class all semester long, so they are very prepared,” she said.

The competition consists of cases that are given to students two weeks before the competition that are based on real-world problems within businesses and Human Resources. At that point, Boudreaux said the students must research and go forward without her assistance, “At that point, I’m not allowed to help them,” Boudreaux explained, “I’ve done all I can do with prepping and teaching them how to prepare for cases and I give them all of the best practices.”

This year’s competition case was a bank that had trouble hiring and keeping employees which is a situation many are facing right now. COVID-19 changed the lives of everyone including how the workforce works. Working remotely revealed that the workforce has been looking for a better work-life balance and Boudreaux thinks that the students learning through this time make them more flexible and will lead to innovative solutions in the workplace, “The students had their own struggles during COVID, they had to adjust having all of their classes online and adjusting to the changes in their own lives, I’m hoping that they will be more open-minded in the workplace to be able to implement some more innovative and new ideas.” She went on to explain that through the studies of the students, they have found that there is a need for more work/life balance which is what this year’s case was all about, “This group seems very flexible…I think it was a great experience all around. It really tied together what they’re learning and how they would handle this issue in the workplace.”

Nicholls SHRM is a student chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management the campus group is closely associated with Bayou SHRM. They have regular meetings and programs that help members learn more about HR practices. The group is open to Nicholls students with an interest in human resources management.  To learn more about SHRM, visit the website here.