2016 Scholarship Winners
It is with great pleasure that I’m able to announce this year’s Excel University scholarship winners! The scholarship is supported by Excel University enrollments, so, thanks to all of you who have helped to make this possible.
Both of these winners are wonderful examples of the type of accounting student that the Excel University scholarship was designed to assist. They are smart, talented, hard-working, and are both highly recommended by their professors.
Congratulations to the following Excel University 2016 Scholarship winners!
Maura Wilkinson: Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Winner of the Excel University Course Enrollment scholarship
Maura has maintained an impressive GPA while working in the school’s payroll department, has been a member of the Dean’s list for every semester, and is a note taker for disadvantaged students. She’s an active member of the Student Accounting Association, and was honored to be asked to be the keynote speaker at the Celebration of Endowed Scholarship dinner. Wow!
Dylan Riddle: Jacksonville University
Winner of the Excel University Scholarship
Dylan has maintained an impressive GPA, and his professor has recognized him as a talented and dedicated student, as well as a class leader. He has a sense of humor, a willingness to take a calculated risk, and a superb analytical ability. He’ll be the vice-president of the accounting club next year, and has already lined up fundraising funds for the club. He is active in his community and is involved in his church youth group.
As part of the scholarship application process, I asked for a short essay “Interesting Ways I’ve Used Excel.” I’d like to share Dylan’s essay with you.
Interesting Ways I’ve Used Excel, by Dylan Riddle
“Many students often ask the question “how will this be useful in real life?” Because of my college classes, I have developed skills in Microsoft Office and have found Microsoft Excel very useful. There are two examples that instantly come to mind; in the classroom I used Microsoft Excel to create a Dashboard project and I have also used it to keep track of student progress in my church youth group.
I found my Dashboard project very entertaining. We were given a large set of data and were told to organize the data and then portray it in a way so that our audience can easily understand it. My project was data from a real bike rental company that allowed customers to rent bikes at one station and then return it to a station. The data was very detailed as it provided the gender, age, pickup location, drop-off location, and duration of the rental. The data also allowed you to make interpretations, such as theft. In my project I answered 6 questions by providing visuals of the data in one central location. The visuals had many different requirements that must be satisfied, such as, using check boxes, trend lines, spark lines, macros, pivot tables, etc. I really enjoyed this project and it revealed to me that I did not know everything about Microsoft Excel. Since that class I have been able to use the acquired skills in “real life.”
As mentioned earlier, I also have found a use for Microsoft Excel in the administration of my church youth group. Students are given goals to memorize Bible verses and other various tasks, and in return they earn points. The goal of this program is to encourage students to study more about God. After achieving different amounts of points students earn rewards. I use Microsoft Excel, alongside with Microsoft Access, to handle all administrative needs for the youth group. I use Access to keep a database of student information. In Excel, I keep a running tally of all points and take attendance, as you can imagine this is a massive spreadsheet that I can easily maneuver and control because of my acquired skills. It would be extremely daunting to have to handle all of this on paper. Microsoft Excel takes a difficult task and makes it so much easier. I have even taken it a step further as to uploading the spreadsheet to a cloud based service to allow other leaders access to the spreadsheet.
Not only have I found creative ways to use Microsoft Excel, but it has also been a huge help in my life. I could not imagine life without all that Excel has to offer.”
Thanks Dylan for your essay, and I too could not imagine life without Excel!!!
Also…
If you know of an accounting student that would like to apply for next year’s scholarship, send them over to excel-university.com/scholarship to apply.
Again…a big THANK YOU to all Excel University students, whose enrollments have supported this scholarship program!!
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