January 17th won't be a typical Friday at the Harbour Centre campus - at least not for Masters of Public Policy (MPP) students competing in the School's 2nd annual Internal Case Competition.  

Five teams of MPP students will present their policy analyses and recommendations to a judging panel - with only three hours to develop and prepare. The specifics of the policy case that the teams will address won't be revealed until the morning of the competition.

That's when the countdown begins and tension runs high.  Each team will deliver a twenty-minute presentation and face an intensive Q&A session from the judges, who take on roles of senior government officials dealing with the issues surrounding the fictional case.

First-year MPP student Hannah Rabinovich commented, "This is an excellent opportunity for us to synthesize course content and improve our public speaking and presentation skills at the same time. And a great way to apply both knowledge and skills."

Judges will be looking for more than sound arguments and smooth delivery; their job is to select the four-member team to represent SFU at the National Policy Case Competition on February 1st, 2014, involving policy schools from twelve universities across Canada. 

Crucially, SFU's MPP students go into this competition defending their title of national champions, after taking first place in the 2013 case competition at Queen's last February.