South Gwinnett High School students earned the top honors in Arby’s National Case Competition, held on March 30. South Gwinnett’s National Winners are Mycah Mitchell, Lubna Jalloh, Maisie Wreh, Taliaa Pouncey, and Kyle Gordon. The team was led by Mrs. Nikki Williams, who provides instruction through 3DE Marketing Principles within the Business Entrepreneurship Hospitality (BEH) Academy.

South Gwinnett’s team impressed the audience with its recommendation of a 'Make Your Own Sandwich' kiosk and the clickable prototype they created to demonstrate it. Arby's judge, Dan Burns, shared that what defines a winning team “is realizing that everyone plays a very important role in a team and as a team.” He went on to tell each member of the South Gwinnett team, "You represented not only your project, but yourselves and your team just phenomenally."

The 3DE program, located at South Gwinnett High School, is a full immersion “school within a school” that is designed to provide students with core academic courses. The program also includes Advanced Placement courses, delivered by dedicated 3DE teachers to ensure an engaging and interdisciplinary learning environment. 3DE strategically blends the core competencies of school districts, Junior Achievement, and the broader business community to initiate transformation from the inside out. Additionally, 3DE partners with local school districts to challenge high school students in relevant “case challenges” that revolve around high-growth industries and businesses. The case challenges are integrated within English, science, math, and history courses, which means students are learning the context of these academic concepts through the lens of a business scenario. Then, as seniors, the students are provided opportunities including semester-long internships, where they collaborate with partner organizations to gain experience in the workplace. The result is a model that effectively utilizes networks, resources, and expertise structured around real-world problems.

As part of the Arby’s Foundation’s commitment to helping kids pursue their dreams with confidence, the Foundation has committed $2 million to support 3DE schools, which makes high-quality education accessible to all students. “Quality education leads to economic opportunity and the Arby’s Foundation is helping to provide that for thousands of students every year,” says Callie Majors, SVP of Strategic Partnership and Brand Development for 3DE. “As a founding national partner, the Arby’s Foundation has been instrumental in helping us develop these case challenges,” Ms. Majors adds. “Year after year, the level of employee engagement and strategic thought partnership has been extremely beneficial to us. In 2019 alone, the Arby’s Foundation has worked with nearly 2,000 9th grade students on an Arby’s case challenge.”

For this challenge, students were tasked with creating a three- to five-minute presentation that identifies the needs and wants of the 13- to 17-year-old demographic and presents recommendations on improving the customer experience for this target market. Similar to GCPS’ Portrait of a Graduate skill of Empathy, the 3DE competency of Cultural Agility was used to assess situations, navigate cultural, structural, and situational norms, read the context, and identify stakeholders' perspectives to foster positive relationships. Students used the Analytical Tool of a Simple Survey, where they developed a five-question survey with 74 respondents. The team presented a response to an assigned Case Challenge Question: “What modifications, or upgrades, to the customer experience should Arby’s consider, to appeal to a new target market of 13- to 17-year-olds?”

Each school's winning team provided a video and presentation submission to enter the 3DE nationwide competition. The presentations were reviewed by 3DE, whose judging teams consisted of Case Experience and Instructional Support staff, and scores were tallied and combined to determine the top eight teams in the qualifying round. Finally, the National Teaching & Learning team reviewed the presentations of qualifying teams to determine those proceeding to the Final Round. Out of 35 submissions from across the 3DE 44-school network, 9th graders from South Gwinnett High School competed against teams representing Ocoee High School (Ocoee, Fla.), Snider High School (Fort Wayne, Ind.), and Surrattsville High School (Oxon Hill, Md.) to win this year’s Arby’s National Case Competition.

Arby’s National Case Competition Overview 3DE by Junior Achievement is a non-profit, based in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to reengineering high school education nationwide and operates the model in California, D.C., Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Texas.

Watch the recording here.