Bronco Spotlight: Megan Loll
Bachelor of Business Administration in computer information systems, 2020
EDI Analyst at Priority Health Insurance
In my role at Priority Health I interact with various business and technical staff regarding implementation of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) integrations with external customers. I also provide analysis and support for EDI transactions related to insurance enrollment, claims, financial, and eligibility
If you had a campus job or internship, how did they impact your career development?
One of the best opportunities I had was tutoring for a few of the analytics classes in the business college. I was able to get to know several other students and make quite a few close friends. It also provided an opportunity for me to further my analytical knowledge, develop technical skills in my field, and helped me develop the mindset for the job I have now. Tutoring helped confirm that analytics was the career direction that I wanted to take, and I learned new things from professors, who gave me great advice that helped me throughout my time at Western.
I also had the opportunity to intern with Streamline Healthcare Solutions. This internship introduced me to the world of healthcare and information technology. If it were not for this opportunity, I do not know that I would have even considered a career in this field of work. This internship provided me the chance to learn more while in a work environment rather than a classroom and helped develop my professional relationships as well.
What activities, resources, or people helped you prepare for your career?
I am sure I cannot list everyone or everything that helped me along the way. My family and friends provided a great deal of support by giving me the chance to meet people in my field and learn from them, as well as opportunities to observe what their jobs were like. My friends helped to make sure I did not get too caught up in my work and reminded me of the importance to make time for some fun as well. My professors were a tremendous help. Dr. KC Chen and Dr. Reza Mousavi asked me to tutor for their classes over the last year and a half and because of that I was able to develop a relationship with them over that time, which confirmed my desire to pursue the analytical side of my degree. Another professor that helped me a great deal was Dr. Bernhard Han. He continuously pushed me to do better and was always there to offer advice to help my career. I found that the career fairs were also helpful. They may not be the only way to find a job, but they are a great opportunity to meet people and practice interviewing. I feel one of the best student organizations to be a part of for my degree and future IT career development is the Business Technology Network. They hosted several events for students to meet employers and learn new skills.
Which of your skills had the biggest impact on your success?
I think my desire to continue to learn is one of the skills that has greatly impacted my success. I have always had a curiosity to learn more. For some classes, especially coding, this helped me learn not only the language but how much more could be done with programming than what I could have learned by simply doing what was taught in class. This skill is also what pushed me to sit in on meetings or job shadow to see what people do and to learn new things happening in the world of IT. IT is after all one of the fields that is constantly changing, and I believe that having a desire to want to learn more and seek new information helped me be successful both in and out of school.
What experiences impacted the choice of your career path?
Some experiences that stick out to me would be growing up listening to my Grandpa or my Dad talking about their jobs, which were in the IT field, and not really knowing what they were talking about. The major I ended up graduating with was not the major I originally started with at WMU. Over the years, as I started to learn more about their jobs and the type of work they did, this information helped me pick my major. Another experience was my first class within the CIS program, Java Programming, which I had been warned was a harder class. I admit that the class was tough, but it was also a lot of fun learning to program and being able to explore what coding can do, which made me want to take more about coding.