Jonathan Wiley Named Outstanding Senior (5/3/07)

BILLINGS, MT – Make it a three-peat.  Montana State-Billings men’s basketball player Jonathan Wiley will be recognized at Saturday’s commencement as one of the university’s three Outstanding Seniors.  Wiley becomes the third Yellowjacket student-athlete in the last three years to receive the honor.  Women’s basketball player Jenny Langford won the award in 2006, and women’s basketball player Robyn Milne was recognized as an Outstanding Senior in 2005.  Please read the official Montana State University-Billings press release about Jonathan Wiley below.

Jonathan Wiley: Shooting for Excellence
by Dan Carter, University Relations

Being 6 feet, 6 inches tall, Jonathan Wiley has a certain perspective: few people on the MSU Billings campus are taller than he is.

But Wiley has other perspectives that even his Yellowjacket basketball teammates can’t compete with. It’s a global business perspective that only a handful of American students get to experience.

Wiley, who will be awarded an Outstanding Senior Award at commencement exercises on May 5, will graduate with a double major in business management and business finance. He is known to most in Billings and the campus community as a basketball player. The California native played in 102 games during his four years at MSU Billings. He was team captain his senior season and played virtually every position on the team his senior year when the roster was depleted because of injuries and disciplinary reasons. Tall with an impressive wingspan, he is quick enough to stay with guards and tall enough to defend forwards.

The 22-year-old suffered two concussions his senior year, but was among the Heartland Conference leaders in scoring (5th), free throw percentage (4th), defensive rebounds (4th) and minutes played (3rd). For his career as a Yellowjacket, Wiley is 7th for blocked shots (45), 9th for steals (99) and 10th for the number of free throws made (280).

Quiet and stand-offish, Wiley is more comfortable talking about others than he is about himself and thinks about answers when posed a question. He is all business, however, when it comes to his schoolwork.

Scott Harris, an associate professor of economics in the MSU Billings College of Business, said Wiley “exhibits a level of wisdom and maturity that is very rare… especially someone of his age.”

In recommending Wiley for the Outstanding Senior Award, Harris related an academic challenge that reflected the student-athlete’s discipline.

Wiley was enrolled in a senior-level economic forecasting class in the spring semester of 2006. The class was offered once a year and required for his major. The big problem was that the class conflicted not only with out-of-state basketball trips, but with practice times. The course involves mastery of many forecasting techniques, Harris said, as well as being able to formulate and perform statistical hypothesis tests. As part of the course, students much submit a project portfolio that demonstrates original research, analysis and forecasts of the data.

Missing a handful of classes would be dangerous, Harris said. Being away from school for much of the time would be disastrous.

“Nobody had ever been able to pass the course under circumstances that Jonathan was proposing,” Harris said.

While Wiley missed several classes because of basketball, he was in class for every exam. And in the end, Wiley exceeded everyone’s expectations.

“I don’t know how he did it,” Harris said, “but his exam scores were remarkably high. His final project was the best in the class.”

Wiley said the demands of a student-athlete are very high and were of benefit to him.

“Managing basketball and school is hard, but it builds character,” he said.

It was that kind of character that provided Wiley with a rare opportunity. He was one of eight American students in the summer of 2006 to be a part of the Global Village for Future Leaders of Business and Industry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The program is an applied leadership, cross-cultural training program designed for young professionals and experienced students who share the dream of building a leadership career in business and industry.

Through interactive seminars, networking, business trips, consulting projects, and cultural experiences, Global Village interns spend six weeks interacting with teams in roundtable discussions with international business leaders and take part in learning experiences.

“There is a lot of knowledge there that you can’t get anywhere else,” he said.

The experience cemented his resolve to continue his business education. He has applied for a handful of MBA programs, but really has his sights set on Harvard.

In the meantime — and now without basketball obligations — Wiley is expanding his experiences on the campus and in the community.

He is involved in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, an experience he said is “pretty rewarding,” and is “a good opportunity for me to give back” to a community who has supported his career. He is also quick to note that he is learning a lot from his “little brother” who is one of 10 children.

This summer, Wiley will be traveling to Japan for a three-week learning experience and provide even more perspective to a young leader.

He was also working with another senior to sell T-shirts to provide awareness of violence on campuses in the wake of 32 murders at Virginia Tech. He was doing it one T-shirt at a time for Colleges Against Violence.

 “We just wanted to do something to raise awareness of this issue,” Wiley said.