On Friday September 25, Chatham University’s Business and Entrepreneurship Department hosted their first session of their semester series Excel Tutorials. This workshop is done every semester by the Business and Entrepreneurship Department and aims to help students familiarize themselves with Excel in four easy to digest hour-long seminars each Friday. These tutorials consisted of PowerPoints to follow along, various excel spreadsheet exercises to provide a visual and example, and handouts to take home and practice individually.
Week one served as an introduction to the program, covering the basics and helping students feel comfortable using Excel and its functions. It can be intimidating without prior experience. This introduction covered creating and editing worksheets, freezing and unfreezing panels, search options like the find & select, find & replace features, sorting, filters, and formatting options. This also included a take home handout covering the basic excel processes and shortcuts. Week two began with a review of some of the basic formulas such as Sum, Average, and COUNTIF and was more specialized. This second tutorial had a focus on pivot tables, charts, and VLOOKUP. Week three centered around formulas and went more in-depth. Relative cell references and absolute cell references were also covered. Week four focused on an introduction of data validation and macros. This tutorial went into more detail on macros such as how they can be useful, how to create a macro, how to create a macro button, and how to apply a macro globally. MSUS + MBA student Dana Barnes ‘22 noted that the tutorials were “very informative.” She commented, “I usually have a hard time with Excel because it looks daunting. The tutorials were helpful to break things down connect the pieces.”
These workshops were open to all MBA & B.S. in Business students and those involved in the Business & Entrepreneurship dept. at Chatham. MSUS + MBA student Rabi Dahal ‘22 stated, “I have never worked with excel in my past, I had no idea the things that Excel could be used for. Excel is a great tool that not only helped calculate the accurate data, but it also saved massive amounts of time. My experience with the Excel class conducted by BED is a positive one, I would have been a lot more lost without it. The package was well designed, and it really helped me focus on different skills within Excel”. Rabi’s response mirrored the positive feedback from the other attendees who receive a survey to give comments and suggestions.
Resident Excel wizard and B&E Department Graduate Assistant JaneCameron Williamson knows Excel is an incredibly useful tool for all students, even those not taking business classes. She comments, “Excel is a very beneficial tool with many functions. Understanding how to utilize Excel to its fullest potential could be a huge time saver. The formulas and calculations are a big help if you don’t have a calculator. It saves a lot of time and makes the process more efficient. If you have a huge spreadsheet of data, it is helpful to know how to handle it in the most efficient way. It is also a great tool for creating visuals based on your data such as pie charts, bar charts, scatter plots, graphs, pivot tables, and more.”
This semester’s tutorials have ended, but never fear! Next semester will bring a new series of tutorials. Make sure to keep an eye out for emails and newsletters from the B&E Department and follow our Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for updates. It is never too late to learn something new that also looks great on your resume or to just get a refresher on an old skill in your toolbox!
The series is always open to suggestions and comments. If there is a certain topic you want to see or learn more about, please let us know by reaching out to us on either our social medias, or email us at bed@chatham.edu!
