Randiss Hopkins
NIU President Doug Baker’s keystone goal of Student Career Success is something countless Huskies take seriously.
Finance major Franz Varga, for example, enjoyed a pretty cool fall semester when his outstanding performance on the September Bloomberg Aptitude Test in business and finance elevated him into rare company: Varga tied with one other student with the best score in the world. “I’m really proud of my accomplishment,” Varga says. “It reaffirms that I’m improving through my courses at NIU.”
Kiranjit Gill, political science major, journeyed to Springfield in November as the 2015-16 NIU Student Lincoln Laureate, an honor reserved for the university’s top senior. The 21-year-old already has studied abroad, published research and worked in the halls of Congress for a prominent Illinois representative – dreams her parents had for their only daughter nearly two decades ago when they left their homeland of Punjab, India, for “the land of opportunity.”
In the spring, music major Randiss Hopkins took the stage at the Allstate Arena as a speaker at We Day Illinois. The movement of young people who are leading local and global change is “taking the philanthropic world by storm.” Hopkins is the founder of The Remember Project, which works with schools, nonprofits and other organizations to create and identify opportunities for college students to positively impact under-resourced communities in Chicago through volunteer projects.
