Stillman School Senior Selected for Statewide Externship  

Nathaniel Valyo, a senior in the Stillman School of Business, began a joint externship with New Jersey Big Data Alliance and Rutgers Master's in Business and Science Externship Program. This highly selective program was open to all New Jersey university students. 

Valyo became aware of the opportunity through David Rosenthal, Ph.D., an associate professor at the Stillman School of Business and chair of the Department of Computing and Decision Sciences. 

"I received an email from Dr. Rosenthal, my academic advisor, on the IT management major email chain with a link to the application in early August, and I chose to apply. I was selected for an interview, and I learned of my acceptance a few days later."

Valyo is pursuing a B.S. in business administration and is an economics and IT management dual major. While pursuing this degree, Valyo continues to be highly proactive within many different clubs and organizations at Seton Hall. He is a news editor at The Stillman Exchange, a Gerald P. Buccino '63 student, a member of National Society of Collegiate Scholars, and the founder and editor-in-chief of The Stillman Disruption Journal.

Valyo is grateful for this opportunity and is eager to utilize the different skills and knowledge taught in the Stillman School of Business – a school with a focus on transforming concepts into business practice. Valyo says, "The skills I've learned at Seton Hall will help me succeed during this externship. So far, we have used Microsoft Excel, VBA, and Python, all of which I learned in classes for my IT management major, most notably Advanced Business Software Tools and Intro to Programming." He adds, "Recently I've been working with Python to create this dashboard, we are pulling the data directly from the USDA website. I've also been using macros in Excel to figure out ways to update company spreadsheets automatically; up until this point, the spreadsheets have been updated manually each day, so finding ways to update them in VBA with the push of a button will save the company tons of time each day."

Immediately after starting this Externship, Valyo hit the ground running. He is working with a graduate student from Rutgers University and a junior from Rider University to create a data visualization project. 

"We are designing a dashboard for a New Jersey produce packaging company with historical prices on fruit and vegetable commodities, and we are actively looking for ways to automatically update the company spreadsheet to reflect real-time prices. Our team will work through the semester and present our progress and findings to the company in mid-December."

"Our goal is preparing industry ready business school students to capture the most sought-after positions," said Professor Rosenthal. 

At the undergraduate level the Department of Computing and Decision Sciences offers a major as well as a certificate in information technology management and certificates in supply chain management and business analytics.  At the graduate level students can pursue M.B.A. specializations in IT management, supply chain management or an online M.S. in Business Analytics.

Categories: Business