Canisius Student Wins at "X-Culture" Competition

June 16, 2021

BUFFALO, NY – Canisius University student Josef Preci ‘22, from Savona, Italy, was part of a winning multinational team that competed in the “X-Culture” project, during the spring 2021 semester.  Preci and his peers, who made up Team 133, won the 2021 X-Culture Best Team Award. 

Josef Preci

The X-Culture project is a large-scale experiential learning exercise designed to provide students with an opportunity to gain first-hand experience in an international virtual collaboration. More than 5,140 MBA and undergraduate students from 150 universities in 78 countries participated in this year’s X-Culture competition.  Participating students were placed in virtual teams of about six and challenged to develop and implement a business proposal for one of 15 companies that partnered with X-Culture.  Preci’s team was comprised of students from the United States, Colombia and Ghana.  Collectively, the students developed and implemented a business proposal for Troitsky Most, a vegetarian café chain, which experienced challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic, like so many other restaurants.   

“This is a remarkable achievement,” said Vasyl Taras, PhD, X-Culture Project founder and coordinator, of Preci and his peers winning the Best Team Award.  “Based on our rigorous assessment and comparison of the performance of 5,000 students from some of the world’s most reputable universities and almost 1,000 international teams, members of Team 133 were the best.  This places them in the Top 1% worldwide.”

Preci is an undergraduate marketing and business economics major at Canisius University with an expected graduation date of spring 2022.  He became involved in the X-Culture project upon enrolling in a global marketing strategy course at Canisius, taught by Coral R. Snodgrass, PhD, professor of management. As part of the coursework, Snodgrass requires students to participate in the multinational competition.  

The marketing and economics programs at Canisius are housed within the Richard J. Wehle School of Business, which U.S. News & World Report ranks No. 1 among private undergraduate business programs in Western New York. 

One of 27 Jesuit universities in the nation, Canisius is the premier private university in Western New York. Canisius prepares leaders - intelligent, caring, faithful individuals - able to pursue and promote excellence in their professions, their communities and their service to humanity.

 

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