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Pittsburg State University provides many opportunities for students to participate in student run organizations and extracurricular activities. Several student organizations are designed to get students involved and allow them to put their classroom knowledge to effective use. To that end, the Master of Business Association (MBAA) partnered with Beta Alpha Psi to host an Excel seminar, Tuesday Oct. 27, in room 203, at the Gladys Kelce College of Business.
The MBAA invited Pitt State associate professor of economics Alexander Binder to present some “tricks and tips” intended to help students better navigate the Microsoft Excel program. Binder said he could not imagine a student entering the workforce without the need to know how to use Excel extensively.
“I think we’d be failing our students if we didn’t teach them at least some minimums,” Binder said. “I spend most of my time at a computer in my job, and a lot of our business students will spend most of their time at the computer in their job…so you have to know how to use a wide variety of programs, and Microsoft Office is among the most used programs, which includes Excel.”
Jack Thompson is an international business graduate student and president of the MBAA. Thompson hoped the seminar would provide that extra help students sometimes need when working with Excel.
“I think there’s many people that don’t really know how to use it too well,” Thompson said. “I think this will be a great opportunity for everybody to learn, and hopefully everybody can take a few pointers from it. Even if you learn one thing it’ll be a beneficial seminar.”
Katie Beth Bakel, secretary for the MBAA and a grad student in business administration, said she was excited to be able to be part of the seminar.
“I struggle with Excel, as well,” Bakel said. “…just to have it from Dr. Binder is an amazing opportunity, so I am excited for this.”
Thompson agreed it is the perfect opportunity to provide students extra instruction in how to use the program.
“We figured it would be a great opportunity for students to learn how to use Excel,” Thompson said. “Personally, I know how to do some basic things on Excel, but there’s many things that I would like to learn and know more about because as time goes on we increasingly use more technology and Excel becomes more relevant.”
Binder said Excel is great for organizing data and using formulas. He encourages students to use the internet if they need to answer questions about how to use the program.
“When there is something I don’t know how to use, or that I just stumble upon, or I might just have questions and wonder if Excel can do this, I’ll just Google it,” Binder said. “Excel is pretty amazing, any program (is) really, and it’s unlikely you’ll know all there is to know. So, go find all the tutorials…I highly recommend YouTube, because if you can do it on Excel, somebody is showing you how to do it on YouTube.”