Commercial Banking Analyst
LaSalle Bank, NA, Downtown Chicago
Scott graduated summa cum laude and was named a Bone Scholar, ISU's highest academic honor for undergraduate students. He was also Business Week president.
He is pictured in ISU's College of Business Building on a LaSalle Bank recruiting visit.
Area of Finance specialization: Financial Institutions Management
Hometown: Auburn, Illinois
ECO 105 Principles of Economics. Studying economics challenged me to think about problems and ideas in an entirely new way. It thoroughly prepared me for the finance and other business courses I later took, and made my transition to upper-level finance courses much easier.
I enjoyed all the student organizations I was involved in, including Pi Sigma Epsilon, Student Government committees, Business Week, and College of Business Executive Council. These groups provided me with great opportunities to lead, network, and meet a lot of interesting people.
I am currently in LaSalle Bank's Commercial Banking Development Program, a two-year program that provides top level finance and sales training and gives its entrants broad exposure to all facets of commercial lending: manufacturing, service companies, real estate development, personal financial services, specialized industries, even leveraged buyouts. Our focus is on middle market clientele, with annual revenues of up to $500 million and loan commitments of up to $100 million. The goal is to teach future commercial bankers how to appropriately prospect, underwrite, and document all manner of financial transactions. Having a Finance degree from Illinois State definitely gave me a head start on many colleagues who had not received classroom training from courses like financial statement analysis, financial institutions, and the Educational Investment Fund, to name a few.
The Finance curriculum at ISU was very well suited to my career path. Big picture thinking and analytical proficiency are vital to the work I do, and ISU's variety of finance classes really helped me develop those skills. The program goes beyond teaching technical points, like changing annuities in time value of money coverage; it challenges students to achieve something more important - the ability to think critically. It's this ability to think that will set you apart from your peers.
