IMA Selects CSUB professors’ teaching case for National Student Competition

Competition challenges teams of students with solving global business case

By California State University, Bakersfield

October 6^th, 2025

A teaching case authored by a group of California State University, Bakersfield professors is getting national recognition.

The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) announced that the 2025–26 Student Case Competition will feature a case authored by CSUB professors Drs. Di Wu, Zhenning “Jimmy” Xu, John Tarjan and Ji Li titled “West Valley Fresh Distribution Company: Using Data Analytics to Explore Opportunities in the Hass Avocado Market."

The competition challenges students with solving a global business case by applying analytics to address management accounting, supply chain and marketing issues. It consists of regional events and is open to college students worldwide.

College teams of three to five students compete within regions. The top four teams from each region advance to present both virtually and in person at the regional finals. U.S. finalists advance to compete at the IMA Accounting and Finance Conference in June 2026 to determine the national champion.

“We are honored that our published teaching case has been selected for the 2025–2026 IMA Student Case Competition, and we look forward to helping prepare the next generation of business leaders in the U.S. and beyond,” said Dr. Wu.

Reflecting on the case development experience with this interdisciplinary team, Dr. Xu said “it was an honor to be part of this team on such a great project. I have used the data and early versions of some case questions relevant to marketing and sales to help students develop problem-solving and data analytics skills using R and Tableau across several courses.”

The case has also been utilized in the CSUB MBA program, in one of the classes taught by Dr. Tarjan.

This isn't the first time that CSUB has been represented in the IMA Student Case Competition. In 2019, Dr. Wu and Dr. Li co-advised a team of CSUB students in the competition, which advanced to the annual conference in San Diego as one of four national finalists. CSUB was the first West Coast university to reach the finals, according to Dr. Wu.

Dr. Xu’s students have also won several awards in national competitions, including second- and third-place finishes in the 2024 Marketing Research/Analytics Competition.

The College of Business and Public Administration (BPA) at CSUB has a longstanding tradition of promoting student case competitions and supporting faculty in integrating data-driven decision-making case studies into business education.

BPA Dean Dr. Deborah Cours said these kinds of recognitions exemplify the scholarship impact created by schools of business like CSUB’s.

“We generate knowledge and support learning and teaching, to improve education, practice and policy," she said. "I’m especially proud of this interdisciplinary effort, creating a pedagogical tool that represents a real world business problem viewed from multiple perspectives.”