The CoBA Connection

Grit, Grace, and Giving Back: Meet Ashley Gibson

Grit, Grace, and Giving Back: Meet Ashley Gibson

In 2025, Ashley Gibson hit a wall that would have stopped most people. A career disruption forced her to navigate the uncertainty of job loss alongside personal upheaval. This is the kind of moment that tests confidence, direction, and resolve. But for a Saluki, a wall is not the end of the road. It is an obstacle to climb.

Today, Ashley is not only back on her feet, she is reaching back to lift the next generation of students alongside her. Her journey reflects Saluki grit in its purest form: resilience, reinvention, and a commitment to paying opportunity forward. It is a story that has come full circle, from a student in need to a donor who refuses to let a scholarship be just a check.

The Psychology of a Pivot
Ashley’s journey at SIU did not begin with accounting. It began with a fascination for the human mind. As a psychology major, she developed a deep interest in how people think, adapt, and make decisions; insights that would later become foundational to her professional success. When she felt the pull toward accounting, she did not view the mid-degree shift as a setback. She treated it as a strategic pivot.

While working as a student worker at the Dean’s Office of the Graduate School, Ashley gained a behind the scenes understanding of university systems and requirements. That experience, combined with discipline and determination, allowed her to complete her accounting degree in just three years. “It shows the importance of being present in any capacity,” Ashley reflects. “Whether I was filing paperwork or supporting the Graduate School, every role built the discipline, confidence and momentum.

Just as important was the community she found along the way. Mentorship from Dr. Marcus Odom and Dean Cradit, combined with leadership roles in the Accounting Society and her work as a teaching assistant, helped transform a first-generation student into a confident and capable professional.

The Full Circle: From Recipient to Provider
Ashley still remembers receiving her first scholarship. It was not only financial support, but validation that she belonged in the room. Now, through her own endowed scholarship in the College of Business and Analytics, she is working to make sure that sense of belonging is not rare. But Ashley is clear: her scholarship is not a "Willy Wonka Golden Ticket" that you simply get and forget.

“I told the college, look, this is not just about a scholarship,” Ashley says. “I want to foster a relationship. If you receive my scholarship, you get mentorship for my life, however long I live. It is an open-ended offer for guidance, coaching, and advocacy.”

Advocating for Women in a Demanding Field
Ashley knows firsthand that the corporate world, and accounting in particular, can be especially demanding for women. She has seen the ceilings, the assumptions, and the unspoken barriers that rarely appear in job descriptions. Her mission is to ensure the women who follow her have a coach in their corner. Someone who can provide objective guidance and steady support. She also offers one piece of advice for every CoBA student entering the workforce: embrace artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, but never stop building the emotional intelligence, resilience, and human connection that technology cannot replace.

The Legacy of the Saluki Spirit
Ashley Gibson’s story is a reminder that at SIU, students don’t just graduate, they evolve.

They take the hits.
They stumble.
They pivot.
They rebuild.

And when they succeed, they reach back to pay it forward with purpose. “It doesn’t have to be this hard,” Ashley notes, reflecting on her career.

By pairing financial support with genuine, long-term mentorship, she is smoothing the path for future Salukis, ensuring that fewer students feel alone when they face their own walls. As she continues to visit her parents in nearby Carterville, her presence is felt in Rehn Hall, not just as a name on a donor list, but as an active advocate for student success. In Ashley’s world, the scholarship is only the introduction. The relationship is the real legacy.

30 Years. Thousands of Students. One Indelible Legacy.

30 Years. Thousands of Students. One Enduring Legacy

He sat in the back of the classroom, eyes glazed, seemingly miles away from a lecture on organizational behavior. For an entire semester, Dr. Steven Karau, whose research on group motivation has been featured on ABC’s 20/20 and in The Wall Street Journal, was certain he had failed to reach him. “He looked completely disengaged,” Karau recalls. “I would ask questions, try to pull him in, but on the surface, it looked like pure boredom.”

Years later, a chance encounter at a professional event revealed a very different story. The former student approached Karau, not with a complaint, but with a confession: “Your course was my favorite,” he said. “That personality training we did? I used it to understand myself build, my confidence, and it’s the reason I am successful today.” That moment, the quiet transformation of a seemingly disengaged student into a confident leader, captures exactly why Dr. Karau, a Professor of Management at the College of Business and Analytics, has been named the 2025 CoBA Graduate Teacher of the Year.

A Researcher’s Lens, A Teacher’s Heart

To the academic world, Dr. Karau is a giant of Social Psychology. He earned his PhD from Purdue and has published more than 50 articles in elite journals, including Psychological Review. He is the co-developer of the Collective Effort Model and Role Congruity Theory, and is widely regarded as the world's leading expert on "social loafing" — the tendency for individuals to contribute less effort when working in groups. But if you ask Dr. Karau what excites him more than citations or journal rankings, he will tell you immediately it is the people in the room.

"Human behavior is an endless puzzle," he says. For Karau, the classroom is an ongoing experiment. One grounded in teaching abstract concepts, but anchored in the lived experiences of his students. He designs real-world activities to explain motivation, adapts his teaching to diverse learning styles, and challenges students at every level, from undergraduates to doctoral candidates, with one singular goal: Helping them reach mastery within sixteen weeks.

The Saluki Blueprint for Success

Dr. Karau has taught at institutions including Clemson University and Virginia Commonwealth University, but he deliberately chose SIU for something harder to quantify and impossible to ignore once you experience it: collegiality. “There is a supportive, relaxed environment here,” he said “That makes high level research possible while also creating space for genuine student connection.”

For CoBA students, faculty, staff, and alumni, the recognition reflects more than one professor’s excellence. It reinforces what the college stands for: teaching that stays relevant, research that informs practice, and mentorship that extends far beyond the classroom. Dr. Karau is clear that he does not just teach business concepts. He teaches the skills that sustain careers but are often the hardest to master:

• Emotional intelligence - understanding the why behind people’s actions.
• Effective communication - the bridge between a good idea and a great result.
• Curiosity as a superpower - because the moment you stop wondering is the moment you stop growing.
• Adaptability and flow - staying flexible and keeping your coping resources one step ahead of the challenge.

The Legacy of the "Small Piece"
In a world driven by  viral moments and short attention spans, Dr. Karau’s teaching philosophy is a masterclass in sustainability. He does not see himself as a “sage on a stage”, but as a mentor who provides "a small piece" of a much larger puzzle — one students may not fully recognize until years later. As CoBA celebrates his more than 30 year career and this well-deserved honor, Dr. Karau offers a simple reminder about what great teaching really is. "Success isn't always loud," Dr. Karau says, thinking back to that student in the back row. "Sometimes, the most impactful thing you can do is simply stay flexible, stay curious, and wait for the light to turn on."

From TV producer to GA Teacher of the Year: The Sunder Regmi Story 

The path from professional television production to a Ph.D. in Economics is rarely a straight line. But for Sunder Regmi, the 2025 Graduate Assistant Teacher of the Year in the College of Business and Analytics, the transition was driven by a simple realization:

Whether you’re behind a camera or at the front of a lecture hall, your job is the same, capture the audience’s imagination. “I used to produce advertisements and edit videos on Adobe Premiere” Regmi recalls, reflecting his media background. Today, he is not selling products, but complex, often intimidating, economic theory. And by every measure, his students are buying in.

The Educator as a Game Designer

For many students, economics carries a reputation for being abstract, intimidating, and math heavy. Regmi saw that fear not as a barrier, but as a design problem. Rather than relying on traditional lectures, he has embraced gamification in the classroom. By transforming economic concepts into interactive challenges and competitive activities, he turns passive listeners into active participants. “Teaching is about making the content interactive,” Regmi explains. “As students engage, the theory starts to make sense.” By rooting his pedagogy in engagement, his goal is not memorization, but mastery, reaching a point where formulas fade into the background and students begin to see how economics explains the world around them.

The Architecture of Time - A “Chunking method”

Behind Regmi’s energetic classroom presence is a disciplined system that allows him to thrive as both a teacher and a researcher and has become a blueprint for his peers. He relies on a deliberate “chunking” method to manage the demands of a Ph.D. program:

• Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are reserved exclusively for research, when his focus is fully devoted to his dissertation and scholarly writing.
• Tuesdays and Thursdays belong entirely to students, devoted to teaching, grading, and mentorship.
• Weekends provide space for unfinished tasks while preserving time for family.

“Protecting my research days is essential,” Regmi says. “It allows me to be fully present for my students without compromising my scholarship.” The result is balance and consistently high performance in both roles.

Economics in the Age of AI

Regmi does not just teach the future; he studies it. While many social scientist approach artificial intelligence with caution, Regmi leaned in. His doctoral dissertation blends traditional economics with cutting-edge technology, using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze central bank communications. “I realized I needed to keep up with technology like AI,” Regmi notes. By analyzing more than half a million sentences from speeches by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks, Regmi examines how tone, wording, and sentiment influence economic stability in regions such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Euro Area. It is research that sits at the intersection of economics, data analytics, and policy, and reflects the forward-looking mindset CoBA encourages in its scholars.

A Legacy of Adaptability

Sunder Regmi’s journey from media production to the winner’s circle of the College of Business and Analytics is a testament to the power of adaptability. He is a teacher who refuses to let his classroom grow stale. A researcher unafraid to let new tools reshape old questions. And a mentor who meets students where they are, then challenges them to go further. As he prepares for the next chapter of his career, Regmi leaves students with the same philosophy that earned him this award: Embrace the tools of tomorrow and never be afraid to turn a difficult lesson into a game worth winning.

Balance Sheets & Bragging Rights: Several High Schools Take Top Honors at SIU’s 28th Accounting Challenge

“I have never seen a room of high school students so excited,” said Dr. Randy Davis, Interim Director of the School of Accountancy.

He was not talking about a pep rally or a championship game. He was describing the 28th Annual Accounting Challenge. On a cold January morning, the SIU Student Center was transformed into a high stakes arena. Part academic gauntlet, part collaborative think tank, the event brought hundreds of students from across the region for a firsthand taste of university life, teamwork, and the professional thrill of competition.

The Anatomy of the Challenge

The Accounting Challenge is a carefully engineered two-part experience designed to bridge the gap between high school classrooms and the dynamic world of collegiate business. The morning tested technical precision through a rigorous individual accounting exam, focused on the fundamentals of accounting principles and financial reasoning. In the afternoon, the competition shifted gears, trading calculators for creativity. Student teams were challenged to construct a structure using only paper and tape, with one critical mission: hold a metal washer as high as possible while surviving a winding obstacle course. The activity served as a powerful metaphor for the accounting profession. Just as one weak joint can cause a paper structure to collapse, a single overlooked detail can jeopardize an audit or financial statement. For the winning teams, the secret was not about engineering alone, it was about communication. 

"There wasn’t just one person in charge," noted Lorren Niederhofer of Centralia High School,  which took top honors in Accounting 2 team building competition. "It was the collaboration of a bunch of different ideas and listening to each other." It was a vivid reminder that in business, the strongest structures are not built from paper or steel, but they are built on teamwork and trust.

Opening Doors Through Outreach

For Dr. Davis, the event is about more than competition. “Outreach is always important,” he said. “It gives students a sense of what we are all about here at SIU. Many high school students do not realize how exciting university learning can be and this gives them a fantastic taste of it.” That sense of welcome is intentional. The Accounting Challenge is designed to demystify college, reduce barriers, and show students that business education can be both rigorous and engaging.

The Engine Room: Students Powering Students

While the high schoolers were the stars of the day, the event’s heartbeat was its student volunteers. More than 40 CoBA students, alongside faculty and staff, worked behind the scenes to make the challenge possible. The months-long, team driven effort culminated in a single, seamless day. Lexi Lingle, a teaching assistant and volunteer, spent countless hours preparing exams and logistics. “We probably had 40 or 50 students volunteer today,” Lexi said. “From preparing the exam to providing the helping hands needed to feed hundreds of participants, we would not be able to do this without the support of faculty and student volunteers.”

Benna Williams, Assistant Director of the School of Accountancy, emphasized another defining feature of the event: accessibility. “Because of the support from the Illinois CPA Society, the SIU School of Accountancy, and the Accounting Circle, the Accounting Challenge remains free for every participant,” Williams said. “That ensures the path to a business degree is open to everyone, regardless of their background.”

Several regional schools claimed the podium. O’Fallon Township High School dominated the Accounting 1 individual academic category, sweeping the top three spots, while Flora High School’s Caelen Harper secured first place in Accounting 2 and Illinois Eastern Community Colleges’ Jessica Wagner took top honors in the collegiate division. The energy shifted from the desks to the ballroom for the "Designing a Win" team challenge, where O’Fallon High School (taught by Jennifer Haislar) proved their structural mettle by winning the Accounting 1 division. Meanwhile, the team from Centralia High School (taught by Beth Toennies) demonstrated superior strategy and communication to take first place in the Accounting 2 team competition, with Flora High School and Illinois Eastern Community Colleges also earning recognized spots for their innovative designs.

The Saluki Blueprint

Now in its 28th year, the Accounting Challenge stands as a cornerstone of CoBA’s commitment to experiential learning, access, and community engagement. It is not just about balancing books. It is about balancing technical mastery with human connection, collaboration, leadership, and confidence. The hundreds of students who walked through the doors of the Student Center did not just leave with awards and scholarships. They left with a clearer picture of what is possible and the understanding that at SIU, they are supported every step of the way.