After an unexpected win over the much larger, better-financed Brigham Young University group in regional competition in Orlando, Fla., Brenau University´s Students in Free Enterprise team participated this week in its first national competition at the SIFE USA National Exposition in Chicago.

The Brenau team was one of only 142 other teams from around the United States. Others from Georgia included the University of Georgia, Valdosta State University, Gainesville State College and Kennesaw State University.

Although winning plaudits from judges and faculty sponsors for the passion of its presentation about its involvement in local community programs in north Georgia, the nine-member Brenau made it through only the first round in its quest to represent the United States in international competition in Singapore this fall.

"These young women represented Brenau very well," said business professor Stephen Claghorn, who worked with professor Greg Chase in preparing the Brenau club for the competition. "They really made an excellent presentation, much better than teams from some much larger schools. I think they learned a lot in the process."

In the regional competition, Claghorn said, the Brenau women "beat a team from Brigham Young University that had never been beaten before.

Founded in 1972 by Texas attorney Robert Davis as a regional project Southwestern Life Insurance, the organization has expanded dramatically on college and university campuses across the nation since 1985 when Jack Shewmaker, vice chairman and chief financial officer of Wal-Mart Stores, became SIFE´s chairman. At universities SIFE teams develop community outreach projects that involve market economics, success skills, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and business ethics.

About 35 Brenau students participate in SIFE. In the past year the group has helped with Meals on Wheels programs for home-bound people in Gainesville, worked with nursing students on organizing their finances to enable them to pay off student loans and avoid the credit card debt trap that catches many college students and recent graduates, helped people prepare tax returns and taught at-risk high school students in semi-rural Banks County, Ga., how do prepare resumes, conduct themselves in job-hunting and even how to dress for a job interview. In the later activity, all five of the likely dropouts the Brenau SIFE team worked with finished high school. Of the five, one plans to join the Air Force to earn money for college and three others plan to enroll in colleges in the fall - including one at Brenau University.

The Brenau "traveling squad" for the Chicago competition included Maida Smajic, a Bosnia native who is a junior business administration major; Xiaoding Wu from Zhengzhou, China, a junior business management major; Samantha Jones of Auburn, Ga., a sophomore accounting and business management major; Elizabeth Burns, a junior business management major from Commerce, Ga.; Allison Cannon, from Lakemont, Ga; Elvira Mora, a native of Guanajuato, Mexico, who now lives in Mt. Airy, Ga, a sophomore accounting major; Brandi Owens of Ocilla, Ga., a junior accounting major; junior Katie Sims and senior Laura Cruz, both accounting majors from Gainesville, Ga.

"I enjoy informing people and persuading them in ways that are good and helpful to their lives," said team member Wu, who never spoke conversational English before coming to Brenau in August 2007. In Chicago, however, it was her lot to describe the Brenau SIFE team´s work at the Gainesville Jaycees Mule Camp Market Festival last October, a colorful annual event that showcases Appalachian and north Georgia crafts, arts, music and culture. At its booth, the Brenau team imported and sold stuff from a little off the beaten Appalachian festival path: products from countries of some of the SIFE team members, including China, Bosnia, Argentina and Mexico.