Meet Lacy McCornack
Lacy not only attended two of my classes, but my wife's class as well, so she is like family to me. I had no doubt Lacy would land a great job and make important contributions to her employer.
Lacy works in the accounting division of Chesapeake, but her job requires more Excel skills than accounting skills—about 90% of her job is spent within Excel. Her main job entails making sure the sales taxes from Chesapeake purchases are made correctly. Most of us are used to paying sales taxes directly at the point of purchase, but for many purchases of large firms like Chesapeake, what tax should be paid on what purchase is not a straightforward question. Answering this question is Lacy's job. It does not sound fun, Lacy admits. For reasons difficult to explain, she does enjoy her job though. Current students can take refuge in the fact that many of the business jobs that have boring job descriptions may actually be engaging and rewarding.
Soon after taking her job, Lacy contacted me noting that her boss requested she perform a data analysis that utilized regression. Her job was to study the relationship between two variables, one a physical measurement and one a cost number. Fortunately, Lacy's many classes in Excel, statistics, and algebra prepared her well for this assignment! If any student wonders why they should learn algebra, computer software, or statistics, they should see Lacy for an answer!
