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K-State Today Student Edition

May 4, 2012

Highly accountable: Student from Wichita Earns College of Business Administration's Outstanding Senior Award

Submitted by Andy Ptacek

A top scholar, involved student and caring individual. That's how one Kansas State University professor describes the recipient of the spring 2012 College of Business Administration Outstanding Senior Award.

Jacqueline Spahn, senior in accounting, Wichita, will be recognized with the honor at the college's commencement ceremony May 12. She will receive a plaque and $500 cash award.

"Jackie is one of the top five or 10 students I have had in my 40 years of teaching accounting," said Dan Deines, professor of accounting and KPMG Peat Marwick faculty fellow in the college. "She is very bright, but it is her intellectual curiosity and her genuine enthusiasm for learning that creates the intellectual horsepower that sets her apart from her peers. She truly enjoys learning and then putting what she has learned to work."

The college's Outstanding Senior Award recognizes a graduating senior who has excelled in the classroom and in related college activities. Recipients must have a minimum 3.5 grade point average. The winner is selected by a committee from the college's Dean's Student Advisory Council.

Spahn has been active leader in several clubs and organizations in the college and at the university. She is currently fundraising chair for the St. Jude's Up 'Til Dawn executive board and the treasurer for Business Ambassadors, of which she has been a member for two years. She also served as vice president of Beta Gamma Sigma, the international business program honor society.

Spahn is also a ConocoPhillips SPIRIT scholar and a member of multiple honor societies, including Golden Key, National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Beta Alpha Psi and Sigma Alpha Lambda.

"In addition to being a scholar, she is a wonderful person," Deines said. "Friendly, dependable, honest, responsible, giving and caring are just some of the adjectives that can be added to, 'Wow, she is a great student.' I can't wait to follow her career."

This summer Spahn will be an intern in the Kansas City office of Ernst & Young. In the fall she will return to K-State to pursue a master of accountancy and will be a graduate teaching assistant in accounting. A 2008 graduate of Kapaun Mount Carmel Catholic High School, she is the daughter of Jeff and Jennifer Spahn, Wichita.