Fourteen faculty members from Gies College of Business have been chosen as Fellows to support both the College’s business analytics programs and disruption and innovation initiatives for the 2020-2021 academic year. These 14 will spend the year helping advance the mission of The University of Illinois-Deloitte Foundation Center for Business Analytics and the Disruption & Innovation programs at Gies.

RC Evans Data Analytics Fellows
Mehmet Eren Ahsen (Business Administration)
Nerissa Brown (Accountancy)
Josh Bruce (Business Administration)
Michael Donohoe (Accountancy)
Elizabeth Luckman (Business Administration)
Yuqian Xu (Business Administration)

RC Evans Innovation Fellows
Justin Leiby (Accountancy)
Kim Mendoza (Accountancy)
Nehemiah Scott (Business Administration)

Center for Business Analytics Fellows
David Molitor (Finance)
Julian Reif (Finance)
Vishal Sachdev (Business Administration)
Devin Williams (Accountancy)
Joseph Yun (Accountancy)

The University of Illinois-Deloitte Foundation Center for Business Analytics provides leading-edge ideas and curriculum materials that aim to revolutionize how schools teach business analytics to future business professionals. Fellows use their expertise and experience to help develop innovative curricula that will provide students with the data science knowledge, skills, and abilities to take on leadership roles in the quickly evolving world of business analytics.

To date, the Center has released four courses that are free and available to the public. The first two courses, which received considerable acclaim, were downloaded more than 1,800 times across nearly all 50 states and more than 35 countries. So far, representatives from at least 500 unique institutions have requested content from the Center.

“These RC Evans and Center for Business Analytics Fellows are already creating amazing educational content that will continue the Center’s tradition of revolutionary data analytics educational materials,” said Director and Professor of Accountancy Jessen Hobson. “They play a critical role in furthering the goals of the Center and improving business analytics education.”

Disruption & Innovation at Gies encompasses collaborative cross-campus projects aimed at providing extracurricular learning opportunities for students, creating new entrepreneurial opportunities that connect existing campus resources in new ways, and building and strengthening relationships between Gies Business and its corporate collaborators. Interdisciplinary teams of students collaborate on projects focused on an emerging technology, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, or blockchain. The students are then able to deeply explore technology innovations of interest to them, while also delivering a viable product or solution that could help businesses successfully navigate disruption.

About The Deloitte Foundation 
The Deloitte Foundation, founded in 1928, is a not-for-profit organization that supports education in the U.S. through a variety of initiatives that help develop the talent of the future and their influencers and promote excellence in teaching, research and curriculum innovation. The Foundation sponsors an array of national programs relevant to a variety of professional services, benefiting middle/high school students, undergraduates, graduate students and educators. Learn more about the Deloitte Foundation.

About Gies College of Business
For more than 100 years, Gies College of Business has intentionally designed its innovative programs, leading-edge curriculum, and experiential learning opportunities to empower and prepare students to turn big ideas into meaningful actions. Today, Gies faculty prepare more than 7,000 future business leaders, including 3,100 undergraduates, from around the world to put their purpose into practice and provide transformative leadership in a global economy. GiesBusiness.illinois.edu