This week’s campus celebrity is University of Iowa senior Lydia Neeley. Lydia is originally from River Forest, Illinois but she has made a home for herself here in Iowa City over the past three years. Between taking classes and working two jobs, Lydia has become a fabulous multitasker who still makes time to hang out with her friends and have fun her last year in college!
Lydia is double majoring in business economics policy and interdepartmental studies and is looking forward to graduating this May. After graduation Lydia plans to attend grad school to get her MBA.
“After school I would either like to go into public health or hospital administration. I am very interested in the health field, but I don’t feel like I am cut out to be a doctor and I have more business interests. I would also love to live on the west coast, specifically California.”
In between her studies Lydia works as a desk clerk at Parklawn Hall, and she is also a sales associate at Scheels All Sports where she has been employed for a year and a half.
“I really love the products we sell and I also love the people I work with, and of course the discount!”
At the beginning of October Lydia was awarded second place for the Mary Thomas Prappas Ethics Essay Contest. The essay contest was open to all UI undergraduate business students, where they were presented with an ethical dilemma to be solved according to the ethical framework by Harvard business professor Joseph Badaracco.
Two students out of the ten essay finalists were then selected to represent Iowa in a national essay contest, including Lydia and her partner Hayley Driscoll.
The University of Arizona Eller School of Management 12th Annual Ethics Case Competition took place in Tucson, Arizona this past weekend, where 28 teams from universities around the United States and Canada competed for first place.
The student teams were divided up into four divisions of seven teams where they had to analyze, present and respond to questions posed by a panel of judges. Lydia and Hayley worked closely with a bunch of UI faculty, including the assistant director of student leadership, Michael Schluckebier, to prepare their answers for the competition.
When the students weren’t competing, they spent time doing team building exercises and getting to know other business students from schools all around the country. Lydia says her favorite part was just being in Arizona and enjoying the challenge.
“Ethics is a tough challenge because there’s never one correct answer, so it was tough to come up with what we were going to say,” said Lydia. “It was a lot of work in a short time span.”
When Lydia isn’t in class, working, or traveling around the country to ethics competitions, she loves to spend her free time with her boyfriend and her puppy, Luna. Lydia has got her eyes on her future and is dedicating to pursuing her dreams. She reminds us to continue to work hard but also to make time for fun and enjoying life!