‘ The eight Associate candidates came together Tuesday night during the first boardroom elimination ceremony of the competition. Following an endorsement from ‘The Donald’ himself, the judges sent one competitor home and the other seven onto the next round.

Before questioning the candidates, CEO of McCormick Alan Wilson announced that he had received a special letter early Tuesday. After being out of his office for a week, Wilson returned to his desk to find a letter from Donald Trump, whose show, The Apprentice, is the inspiration for the Associate competition at Towson. After hearing about the Towson version through a press release, Trump told Wilson that he will be a great judge and wished him luck.

After questioning from Wilson as well as provost Marcia Welsh and dean Shohreh Kaynama of the College of Business and Economics, the panel decided to eliminate Demontray Hawkins of team R.O.S.E. Hawkins was the project manager, and therefore was ultimately held responsible for his team’s shortcomings in their presentation.

‘After the presentation I thought there was a chance I may be eliminated, first for being the team leader and second because I felt I could have done more in the presentation,’ Hawkins said.

Even though his time in the competition was short, Hawkins said he is not walking away from the experience with any negativity.

‘I learned how to be that much more professional. I used what I learned in text books and going through the C.B.E. and applied it to the corporate world ‘hellip; although I was only in the competition for a week I would recommend [participating] to anyone,’ Hawkins.

The panel of judges based their decision on comments made by Kane Construction representatives, including the CEO Dennis Kane, who presented and decided the winner of the first challenge.

The judges also asked the candidates questions about their strategies and what their strengths and weaknesses were.

Team Concord escaped elimination this week by delivering the winning presentation on Sunday. Nicholas Price was the project manager for Concord.

‘We worked really well together, it was a strong point,’ Danica Mutari, a member of Team Concord, said.

‘In our presentation, I think it was evident that our team worked well together.’

Despite its loss, Team R.O.S.E still thought that it had a good presentation.

‘I think we felt pretty strong about it. We left the presentation thinking we were on top,’ Dov Hoffman, a member of Team R.O.S.E who is still competing, said.

Coordinator of the competition Laleh Malek said she believed that the competitors all performed extremely well in the first challenge.

‘They were fantastic. One thing that impressed me was that they all presented without using a note card, they knew the information well enough. I would give them 100 percent on their presentation skills,’ Malek said.

On Sunday, the seven remaining competitors will present their next corporate challenge. This week, their case is from Target.

The teams will be working on strategies to market Target’s new ‘PFresh’ initiative, which will bring a grocery section to many Target stores nationally and specifically in Maryland, according to regional representatives.

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