It’s hard enough to successfully run an athletic footwear company if you are the CEO of Nike, let alone if you are a senior in college.

Running a company, however, is exactly what four NIU students did for their Management 486 class. Students in the class simulate owning and operating a large company.Management 468 is a required course that every student in the College of Business must take during the second semester of their senior year. The competition is called the Business Strategy Game and is marketed by McGraw-Hill/ Irwin., Inc.

Students from the class are broken into separate teams, and the teams compete against each other. Each class period represents a year. The scoring is based on four factors: Overall Score, Return on Equity (ROE), Earnings per Share (EPS) and Stock Price. Successful groups can choose to enter the global competition.

The companies handle “real-life” business practices such as setting prices, warehouse and distribution operations and choosing celebrity endorsers. They sell their products on different geographical regions all over the world.

Senior marketing majors Kristine Vardakis and Daniel Dowling, senior management major Jeremy Fischer and senior finance major Kyle Hawkins were the co-managers of Fortune Footwear, which was the most successful athletic footwear company in the class out of every section at NIU this semester. In fact, they tied for having the fourth-best overall score in the entire world.

“I think it is definitely something they should be proud of, because they’re competing against some of the best business students in the world,” said Sarah Marsh, chair of the management department.

Besides Fortune Footwear, three other companies from NIU placed in the top 100 worldwide.

Those three teams all tied for having the seventh-best overall score.

“It really forces them to think about all aspects of the business and to make all aspects of the business work together,” Marsh said. “They have to really understand their business, but they have to anticipate what their competitors are likely to do. They have to be aggressive.”

As the project drew to a close, the companies had to speak in front of four real CEOs.

“I was more nervous speaking in front of my classmates than speaking in front of [the CEOs],” Vardakis said .

The simulation and the class have benefits to both students and to NIU, Fischer said.

“This is a really good gauge of what you’ve learned in the business school,” he said. “I think it’ll bring notoriety to Northern’s business school.”