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Lafayette’s team placed first at the Third District College Fed Challenge Regional Championship Nov. 8 on campus in Pfenning Alumni Center. The team advances to the national College Fed Challenge Nov. 27 along with four other schools in the boardroom of the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors in Washington, D.C.

Last year’s team at the national competition with Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve

The team has had great success on the national level, being crowned champion in 2009-10, placing second in the country in 2010-11, and receiving an honorable mention last year. More than 100 teams throughout the country compete through local, regional, and national contests.

Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the regional contest included Lafayette, Lehigh, Gettysburg, Elizabethtown, The College of New Jersey, Delaware, Shippensburg, Ursinus, and Saint Francis.

The students on this year’s team include John Bolton ’13 (Darien, Conn.), a mathematics-economics major; Xiao Cui ’13 (Beijing, China), an economics major; Samantha Jordan ’13 (Manassas, Va.), an international economics and commerce major; Kelly Liss ’13 (Oakland, N.J.), an English major; Linh Nguyen ’14 (Hanoi, Vietnam), an economics and mathematics double major; Allyson Papageorge ’14 (New Rochelle, N.Y.), an economics major; Sicheng Wang ’14 (Mianyang, China), an electrical and computer engineering major; and Xinwei Xu ’13 (Shanghai, China), an economics and international affairs major. The team’s advisers are James DeVault, professor of economics, and Julie Smith, assistant professor of economics.

Sponsored by some of the nation’s Federal Reserve banks, the College Fed Challenge encourages better understanding of the U.S. central bank, the forces influencing economic conditions in this country and abroad, and the ways the economy affects everyone’s lives.

In the competitions, teams play the role of members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policymaking body. They give a 20-minute presentation on monetary policy and then defend their position during a 15-minute round of intensive questioning by the judges. The teams are judged on content, teamwork, responses to questions, presentation, and style.