Gonzaga University's Marketing 490 class recently placed second in the Honda Civic Sedan Marketing Challenge from among 20 schools nationwide that participated in the program last semester.

Swerve Productions, the name of the GU student-run marketing agency, won $5,000 for Gonzaga's School of Business Administration, and the university said the money will go toward funding future experiential learning.

It was the second straight year that Gonzaga has taken runner-up honors in the competition.

The marketing challenge is part of an industry-education partnership that gives students the opportunity to apply their knowledge in the real world by developing and implementing a full-scale promotional campaign for Honda.

Separately, Whitworth University teams recently took first and second place and second and third place in separate categories of the 2013 Inland Northwest Business Plan Competition, winning a total of $9,500 in prize money.

In all, nine teams of students from Whitworth, Gonzaga, Eastern Washington University, Spokane Falls Community College, and Spokane Community College captured a total of $22,500 in cash awards for proposals they submitted.

This year, 89 teams submitted plans in four project categories: social enterprise, community-based, student-generated, and a newly added high school division. Whitworth teams finished first and second in the student-generated category and second and third in the social-enterprise category.

SCC, SFCC, and EWU took first, second, and third, respectively, in the community-based category. Gonzaga teams finished first in the social-enterprise category and third in the student-generated category.

The Herbert B. Jones Foundation, Avista Corp., STCU, and Technet provided major funding for the competition.