The Montana Chamber Foundation sponsors a business simulation called the High School Business Challenge.  Since the Spring semester of 2000, over 6,000 students in over eighty schools across Big Sky Country have participated in the program.  Our goal is to offer the Business Challenge in every Montana high school.  The High School Business Challenge succeeds the former Business Week, an annual week-long program on the MSU-Bozeman campus that taught high school students business principles from 1978-1998.

The High School Business Challenge now goes directly into the classroom.  We contract with the Montana Council on Economic Education (MCEE) to provide teachers the materials and support to conduct the High School Business Challenge as part of their curriculum.  MCEE provides a variety of business and economic support for teachers.  Teachers then schedule the High School Business Challenge for students in their business, math, civics, and other classes.

Students form teams of two to five individuals and make all the operating decisions for their simulated business, manufacturing compact personal DVD players.  Each week of classroom decisions represents a business quarter.  The game runs for 8 weeks during a semester, the equivalent of 2 years in their business.

Students make decisions in:

• Research and Development

• Marketing and Advertising

• Production and Inventory

• Pricing

• Ethics

Each week (business quarter), the MCEE game administrator collects the team decisions, evaluates them against “competitors” (other teams), computes the sales for that quarter, and returns the results to the teams, who then make new decisions.

Each team starts with a stock price of $25.  The final stock price is based on:

• Total Profits

• Profit Trends

• Return on Sales

• Stock Price and Dividends

• Good Corporate Citizen Mini-Cases

The three teams with the highest stock price at the end of the semester win cash prizes and t-shirts.  Teachers of the top team each semester are also rewarded.  The top team each semester is invited to one of the Montana Chamber's major events: Business Days at the Capitol in January for winners of the Fall semester and the Montana Chamber and Governors' Cup golf tournament in summer for the Spring semester winners.

Schools that have participated since the program's inception in 2000:

Augusta Belgrade Billings Alternative Billings Career Center Billings Christian Billings Skyview Billings West Boulder (Jefferson County) Box Elder Bozeman Bozeman Homeschoolers Brady Broadwater County (Townsend) Browning Butte C.M. Russell (Great Falls) Capital (Helena) Carter County (Ekalaka) Cascade Chinook Clyde Park (Shields Valley) Colstrip Conrad Corvallis Culbertson Cut Bank Dawson County (Glendive) Drummond Dutton Ekalaka (Carter County) Fairfield Fergus (Lewistown) Flathead (Kalispell) Forsyth Geyser Glasgow Glendive (Dawson County) Grass Range Great Falls Great Falls (C.M. Russell) Great Falls Central Hamilton Hardin Helena Helena (Capital) Heritage Christian (Bozeman) Hobson Hysham Jefferson County (Boulder) Joliet Joplin-Inverness Judith Gap Kalispell (Flathead) Kremlin-Gilford Lambert Laurel Lavina Lewistown (Fergus) Lincoln Livingston (Park County) Manhattan Christian Melstone Missoula Big Sky Missoula Sentinel Park (Livingston) Park City Petra Academy (Bozeman) Plentywood Plevna Polson Rapelje Roberts Rocky Boy Rocky Mountain Christian (Helena) Ronan Rosebud Roundup St. Labre Sentinel (Missoula) Shepherd Shields Valley (Clyde Park) Sidney Simms Skyview (Billings) Superior Townsend (Broadwater) Troy Turner Twin Bridges Valley Christian Victor Westby White Sulphur Springs Winifred Montana Tech (college)

Click here to see the winners!

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