LeBow Real Estate Students Impress at Industry Case Competition
Drexel’s first-ever entry into a long-running global case competition resulted in an outstanding student performance and increased national recognition for LeBow’s Real Estate Management and Development (REMD) program.
The 2024 CoreNet Global Academic Challenge charged student teams to think strategically about AI technology’s impact on the corporate real estate industry. This business case competition, organized by CoreNet Global, a nonprofit association supporting the corporate real estate industry, drew interest from colleges and universities throughout the Americas, Africa and Europe.
The Drexel team, comprised of four LeBow undergraduate students, earned a spot in the Challenge finals and emerged from the competition with new perspectives on the global real estate industry and the companies shaping investments and impact.
Representing Drexel and LeBow’s REMD program were Melanie Machuca, real estate management and development ’25; Ethan Swanker, real estate management and development ’26; Nyla Paige, real estate management and development ’26; and Will Wonjah, finance and real estate management and development ’25.
While other teams brought backgrounds in mathematics, engineering or other areas of business to the challenge, the Drexel team was the only finalist with students in a dedicated program of study for real estate.
“Through what we learned in previous classes, we were able to identify key areas that are really important to the real estate industry,” Machuca said.
Machuca, who served as team lead, learned about the challenge from Diane Botson, adjunct instructor and global real estate lead at Vanguard, during a spring term course. Over the summer, Machuca recruited Swanker, a friend and fellow officer in Drexel’s Real Estate Club, and later added Paige and Wonjah.
“In addition to forming the team early, Melanie played a critical role in organizing and planning prep sessions,” Botson says. “Her ability to keep everyone focused and on track helped streamline the team’s efforts and ensure that they were making the most of their time together.”
Taking on the role of an internal corporate real estate team for a major manufacturing company, the team undertook extensive research for its submissions to the challenge’s first round, proposing the use of sensors and networked IoT applications to make improvements in their company’s energy utilization, predictive maintenance, employee satisfaction and workplace utilization.
The team’s work earned them one of three spots in the Challenge finals, along with teams from the University of Houston and Purdue University, and they worked closely with Botson and Salvatore Dragone, adjunct instructor and senior vice president and director at Rubenstein Partners, ahead of the final round at the CoreNet Global Summit held in November in National Harbor, Md.
All four team members were working on co-op during fall term, making collaboration leading up to the competition finals more complicated.
“We mostly met during the evenings to practice our presentation, and [Diane and Sal] would ask us a lot of questions and help us out with areas where we felt unsure,” Machuca says.
After the challenge finals, a 15-minute presentation by each team with follow-up questions from a panel of industry judges, the team from the University of Houston ultimately took first place. Beyond the final results of the competition, both Machuca and Dragone felt the students benefited from the experience.
“I got so much first-hand experience meeting with companies, and I felt like people were impressed to hear that we’re real estate majors and we’re so focused on what we want to do in our careers already,” Machuca says.
Having accompanied the team to the summit, Dragone expressed pride in not just how the team presented but in the professional manner with which the students approached the conference and sought out networking opportunities.
“I feel like just in the span of a few days, I could see a change in them. They were seeking people out, saying hello and asking some really smart questions.”
