Wee Meng Eric Lee, an associate professor of accounting at UNIBusiness, is one of the newest recipients of the Veridian and College of Education Fellowship, which encourages UNI faculty to engage with community partners and enhance teaching. The fellowship is administered by Veridian Credit Union and the UNI College of Education Dean’s Fund for Excellence.
The morning of what would eventually be a triumphant day for a team of University of Northern Iowa accounting students was not going well.
The group of five accounting majors was preparing to compete in the 19th annual FanTAXtic competition held last month in Westlake, Texas, having earned their spot in the national competition by winning the regional qualifier in November.
Over the next 10 years, Forrester Research estimates that AI will take over up to 16% of jobs in the United States. Being analytically-literate will soon be an integral skill set, if it hasn’t already.
It’s no secret that business decisions are largely driven by the bottom line. Historically, that’s how sustainability has been viewed, as a financially driven concept, said Scott Blankman (Accounting ‘89), director for energy and air programs at Clean Wisconsin, a nonprofit environmental policy advocacy organization.
In short: Does sustainability make me money? More recently, that question is becoming easier to answer.
Four UNIBusiness alumni, faculty and staff were honored on the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier’s annual 20 Under 40 list, which names 20 Cedar Valley professionals under the age of 40 who have made outstanding contributions to the community in their work and professional lives.
The list includes:
Andy (John) Anderson (Supply Chain and Operations Management ’05): assistant professor of management and John Deere Endowed Fellow at UNIBusiness, mountain climber and owner of TransChina Solutions LLC.
In the world of data, you can know everything and still know nothing.
We are creating more data than ever before. Every minute, Google conducts 3.8 million searches. Amazon ships more than 1,000 packages. YouTube users watch 4.3 million videos. Every minute. And that was in 2018. By 2020, it’s estimated that 1.7 MB of data will be created every second for every person on the planet.
Al Faisal Yasin (Accounting ’20, Jordan) came to understand the value of compromise during his time as leader of UNIBusiness’ team for the Deloitte Regional FanTAXtic Competition. Compromise was essential because being open to new ideas and working as a unit were the keys to success.
The Iowa Realty Scholarship helped change the course of Allison Ries’ (Accounting, Real Estate and Finance ‘19) college path. She received the money in advance of her junior year, and because of the financial burden it eased, Ries added accounting as her third major.
“I was really excited,” Ries said. “This was the first scholarship I was awarded at UNI, and it was a huge help for my junior year. I was planning on graduating a year early, but when I got the scholarship, I added my additional major.”
Scholarships didn’t really interest Chris Hoins (Accounting ‘95) when he arrived at UNIBusiness in the late 1980s. He and his Waverly high school sweetheart, Dawn, were planning to marry partially in an effort to receive more financial aid. They were self-sufficient and wanted to be treated as independents on their government applications.
Chris searched scholarship listings during those early college years, but nothing popped out — much to his detriment, he admits today.
At the culmination of one of the most shocking financial crimes in the Cedar Valley, FBI agent and University of Northern Iowa alumnus Scott Irwin (Accounting ‘99) was there to make the arrest.
The man under arrest was Russell Wasendorf, who, in the years prior, had been a pillar of the community. He owned a high-end Italian restaurant, several residences valued in the millions and a company, Peregrine Financial Group, which had been in operation for 20 years.
