Meet Jerry Roek- A Qlik Professor Ambassador for 2021!

[Sarah_Miller]

Celebrating 2021 Professor Ambassador, Jerry Roek!

[Sarah_Miller]

This week we are excited to feature Professor Jerry Roek, who we welcomed into the 2021 class of Professor Ambassadors!  Jerry first joined the Qlik Academic Program back in 2017 and has been a loyal member ever since.

During Jerry’s first year in the program, he was teaching a Management Information Systems (MIS) course for undergraduate students covering variety of major degrees in the school of business.  He was inspired to join the Qlik Sense Academic Program to demonstrate the importance of business analytics, how it correlates to technology and most importantly the impact in which business analytics will have in the future career paths.

During the MIS course, Jerry invited his students to join the Academic Program which granted them to access to a variety of valuable resources.  Jerry incorporated the Qlik Sense training and to ensure the students were making the most of their time, he embedded the Qualification exam so many of the students were able to receive a Qlik Sense Business Analyst certificate at the end of the semester.  Jerry credits these resources and specifically the qualification to the popularity of the course.

Not only does Jerry utilize the resources provided by the Academic Program but he has also gone a step ahead and built his own project application that he uses in class, one of which was featured in the Qlik Gallery. The application provides students a structured approached to learn a variety of visualizations, statistical formulas, associative selection and dynamic variable inputs for forecasting – all key concepts in the study of business analytics.  The application is applicable in both management information systems and statistics/business analytics courses.

When asking Jerry the importance of analytics, he explains  "As we have come to learn over the course of the past year, the study of data literacy and business analytics is important to any industry – business, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, etc...  Throughout a student's education journey, it is critical they receive a variety of exposure to these concepts along with how it is incorporated in technology.  Former students have reached out to me after graduation indicating that they now see importance of business analytics, technology and statistics and how it is implemented in making critical business decisions!"

Jerry's encouragement has also resulted in other faculty members to embed these concepts into their curriculums!

As an adjunct faculty member, Jerry has introduced the Qlik Sense academic program and concepts of data literacy in curriculum at Oakland University School of Business and Texas A&M – San Antonio College of Business.

We look forward to working with Jerry this year and supporting his efforts to enable more students on business analytics.