Excel Crash Course by Fordham IPED Alumni Alex Zoubine ’16

By: Djina Stamatovic ’19

On Saturday, October 14th, the IPED students had the chance to attend an Excel Crash Course led by the IPED alumni Alex Zoubine ’16, currently employed in the Portfolio Management Office at Scholastic.

The level of prior Excel knowledge of the students was mixed, however, the pace of the course was able to satisfy the needs of all the attendees. The IPED students had the chance to acquire new skills to employ in the Econometrics and Data Analysis courses offered at Fordham but also in the working world.

In a moderate time frame, various interesting topics were covered, such as spreadsheet formatting and set-up,  simple and in conjunction formulas, pivot tables, and charts. Also, special focus was dedicated to data elaboration, as it is a pivotal element in every business sector–data validation & checks, data analysis, graphing, & regressions and data cleaning & manipulation.

Finally, as Fordham alumni Alex talked about his transition from Fordham to the private industry, his experience with job applications and adapting one’s academic knowledge to the needs of business. He also helped our students with their job/internship preparation in terms of, amongst others, sample data exercises that employers would have during the screening process of hiring.