Eleven California State University, Bakersfield marketing students participated in CSU Channel Islands' (CSUCI) Plot-A-Thon data visualization competition last month, with one student taking home an award.
In the event, more than 30 teams— totaling approximately 80 students — analyzed a comprehensive dataset on California's national parks and their conservation efforts, created infographics using platforms such as Excel, Tableau, R, and Python and presented their insights through video reflections.
Destiny Garcia teamed up with two students from CSUCI and, together, they earned the only Best in R Programming for Data Visualization award. The judges highlighted the team's purposeful, detailed and clear biodiversity map, praising their ability to integrate data and emphasize the significance of animals "in recovery" within their analysis. While Garcia individually received the award, it takes into consideration the whole team's performance.
"My experience at the 2025 Plot-A-Thon competition was an interesting and inspiring trip," Garcia said. "The adrenaline was fun and getting to know my team members during the process was nice. They helped me understand data more than what I went into the competition with. This trip and experience will be one for the books!”
Garcia said she was nervous about working with a team she had never met before, but her fears were quickly put to rest.
"After arriving, I met my team members, who were all very nice and welcoming," she said. "I was amazed at how many students worked on the project all night. On the first day, my team and I were brainstorming on how to tell the story for our data and what variables we were going to use to tell our story. Then, the second day...is when we worked on our R visualization for hours until we finally recorded and submitted our video."
A team made up of two CSUB Master of Business Administration students and a graduate student from Channel Islands was also recognized in the event shoutouts for being one of the top teams in the Data Visualization Using Tableau category. The judges noted their exceptional ability to leverage Tableau to create an engaging and interactive storyboard.
"I'm incredibly proud of these students' achievements and their ability to showcase strong analytical and visualization skills on such a competitive stage, especially considering that many other participants from other schools had years of experience using analytical tools with R, Python or Tableau," said Associate Professor of Marketing Dr. “Jimmy” Zhenning Xu, who supervised and coached the students.
Dr. Xu said the students performed well in the competition despite having only begun to learn how to use Tableau and R this semester and having never attended before. He said they devoted weeks of time to prepare for the event and were enthusiastic about competing.
"It is truly impressive that these students competed against peers from numerous STEM programs and still managed to secure meaningful results," Dr. Xu said. “It speaks to these students’ persistence, skill development and dedication."
CSUB's business students were also well-represented in several other marketing-related competitions. In the fall of 2024, two teams secured second and third place in the National Marketing Research/Analytics Competition. Additionally, another team achieved first place regionally in the Online Global Marketing Competition in 2021.
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