Students in the NIU College of Business are all phenomenal individuals who we love to celebrate. As commencement approaches, it’s our great pleasure to share a couple examples of the many outstanding students who make up the Class of 2022. These individuals were nominated by their faculty and academic advisors to be spotlighted by President Freeman during Spring commencement. All told, more than 20 NIU College of Business students were nominated by college faculty and staff throughout the college. We were asked to submit only one nomination. We submitted all 20-plus.
In celebration of the ever stellar NIU College of Business students, here’s our next entry, written by Chenfang Su, NIU finance academic advisor and NIU finance alumna.
Paula Veyhle
It is my pleasure to strongly recommend Paula A. Veyhle as an excellent nominee for Spring Commence 2022.
As academic advisor for the Department of Finance, I work closely with students and have seen many outstanding students in our department. Among her many other attributes and accomplishments, Paula Veyhle, a German native, uniquely stands out with her European background in Germany.
Paula graduated in the top of her class in May 2021 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Leadership and Management and a minor in Marketing. She also earned a Professional Selling certificate, after which she enrolled in the Master of Finance program at NIU.
Paula has always embraced a full university experience and at the same time, thrives academically. She is on track to graduate with a perfect GPA in a highly rigorous master level program. She contributes to the college’s diversity by bringing her European background and perspective into her activities. As a German native, she dedicates herself to bringing all cultures together by serving as chair of the NIU College of Business Dean’s Student Advisory Board and by hosting weekly Global Thursdays events hosted by the Global MBA program. During these events, students with international backgrounds share their experiences as well as provide insights into their countries, heritage and cultures.
Paula has also collaborated with a recently graduated alumna and with the college’s Director of Marketing Michelle De Jean on a diversity project, which Paula and Samantha (Huskie alumna) began more than a year ago. Their scope of work called for interviewing College of Business faculty, staff, students and alumni in order to understand the range of individual views on diversity and inclusion in a complex world. Paula’s work product included a summation of the individual discussions, a drafted video script, engagement of the university’s videography unit and ongoing engagement of/communication with the many interested faculty, staff, students, and alumni who eagerly volunteered to advocate for and showcase diversity and belonging within the business school.
In the business sector, Paula held internship experiences overseas, most notably with Mercedes-Benz in Germany (during summer 2020 and again in 2021). In her internship capacity, she contributed to the organization’s key global account activities by analyzing three out of six strategy pillars as conceived of and implemented by Mercedes-Benz.
Paula takes on the challenge of a range of research opportunities. In addition to numerous campus activities, she was selected as one of the three NIU student participants to compete in the annual Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Research Challenge, a global competition involving thousands of public and ivy league universities across the United States and around the world. An innovative idea she proposed to her teammates was to factor in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria into the valuation model they created. By adopting her innovative strategy and by collaborating seamlessly as a team, Paula and her NIU student colleagues won NIU’s first-ever first place finish in the highly competitive Chicago region.
Additionally, she is also part of the Student Managed Portfolio, a non-lecture-based class that manages a portion of funds from the NIU Foundation. As one of the student analysts, she performs extensive in-depth research and makes the best possible recommendations for the client, the NIU Foundation. Her research skills were enhanced in other business areas when she took on the role of junior consultant for a team of students in the college’s Experiential Learning Center, which offers semester long student team research/consulting to existing organizations, in this case health care start-up Humaginarium. In the next semester, Paula followed up on the project by serving as assistant coach to help a new student team build upon the work. As one of her many accomplishments, she also participated and won a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) case competition, where she and her teammates presented the case in front of all the PwC judges.
I am confident that Paula Veyhle would be a great fit as one of the nominees for the Spring Commencement. Not only will she bring the traits you’re looking for, but she will also become an outstanding example for other NIU Huskies to learn from.
by Chenfang Su, academic advisor in the Department of Finance; posted by Michelle De Jean, director of marketing, NIU College of Business
