WATCH: Florida Tech’s Scholar-Athlete Spotlight Recognizes Basketball Player Hannah Roney

majoring in accounting and financial forensics

ABOVE VIDEO: In this Scholar-Athlete Spotlight, Florida Tech features Panther women’s basketball player Hannah Roney, a senior who is majoring in accounting and financial forensics.

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field.

Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field.

In this Scholar-Athlete Spotlight, we feature Panther women’s basketball player Hannah Roney, a senior point guard who is majoring in accounting and financial forensics.

Originally from Jacksonville, Roney comes to Tech after graduating from Belmont Abbey College, where she earned her undergraduate degree in business administration and finance. While at Belmont-Abbey, Roney was named to the Conference Carolinas Presidential Honor Roll multiple times.

This past season with the Panthers, Hannah averaged 10.4 points, 3.9 assists, 2.7 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game in 24 games while shooting 37.5% from three-point range.

Having accomplished so much on and off the court in her college career, we sat down with Hannah to ask her how she’s made it all work, her plans after graduation, and what she’s enjoyed about her time at Florida Tech.

■ What’s your major at Florida Tech and why did you choose this? Is it something that you’ve always wanted to be a part of?

I’m getting my master’s currently in accounting and financial forensics. I got my undergrad in Business Management Accounting with a minor in criminal justice.

So, in my undergrad, I kind of knew that I want to do financial forensics but in high school, I kind of thought I was going to be a doctor. I went to college and realized that I hate biology, so that was not the route to take.

I started taking more random classes to figure out what I liked, and math just always came easy for me and it was just the fun problem-solving part of it I really enjoyed. So, I kind of just stuck with the accounting route.

■ What was it about Florida Tech that drew you here?

Accounting and financial forensics isn’t offered at a lot of places. It’s a very specific master’s program that’s currently growing, but not a lot of places have it, especially here in Florida.

So, to get the opportunity to play at the Division II level for one more year and also get that financial forensics degree didn’t seem very possible until I actually looked at Florida Tech. It just seemed perfect, I felt like it was meant to be because I was able to do both.

■ How do you plan to use your degree after graduation?

Upon graduation, I have an internship with PricewaterhouseCoopers as an audit intern. My main goal is to end up being a forensic accountant for the FBI.

So, I hope that with my audit internship, I can hopefully get a full-time job and get some auditing experience, so that in the future I can actually be a forensic accountant.

■ For those that don’t know, what does a forensic accountant do?

It mainly deals with fraud. We want to look into other people’s financial statements. If there are any red flags that a company points out about a person or another corporation, they see this forensic accountant can go in and look through the financial statements and maybe find something that’s wrong and pursue that route.

Also, you get a certification, a Certified Fraud Examiner, and with this, you’re able to actually go in court and testify about these fraudulent activities.

■ What are some of the exciting projects that you’ve been able to work on in classes here?

So, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a lot of projects and it’s been really interesting. A lot of projects I enjoy doing are working with Excel, especially because in the professional setting, we use Excel a lot.

Being able to learn the shortcuts of that and look at maybe fake financial statements and find the red flags in those is really cool because then it applies real-world experience to the educational aspect which is really cool.

■ Having spent four years at Belmont Abbey and now you’re in your first year here at Florida Tech, what’s been the biggest difference for you just being around campus, what you see every day and what you deal with?

[At my last school] I don’t know if this is really the right word, but I would say it was more sheltered just because there wasn’t as much diversity as we have here.

Especially with it being such an international school and even on the basketball team just here having so many people from so many different countries, learning about different cultures is really interesting.

It’s really helped me learn how to communicate better, especially with some people that you know, can speak all these languages and I only know English. Just learning how they communicate best and how to best communicate with them has been really cool.

■ Given everything you’ve achieved on and off the court, how do you manage all of it once you’re in season?

Freshman year was definitely a wake-up call for me. I definitely had to learn to manage my time better than I had in high school because there’s so much more work and so much more basketball.

It was more trial and error, really, freshman year, just seeing what works for me and what doesn’t. I’ve started to rely a lot on making my quizlets! That’s very helpful for me and just finding those tools that I can use to help me succeed the best.

■ How has being a collegiate athlete prepared you for what you’re doing now and what do you take from basketball that you apply to your studies?

Probably the biggest thing is just putting in the time. Especially in basketball, your skills are going to show themselves, so if you’re putting in the time, you’re putting in the effort, that’s going to show itself. If you’re not, then everyone’s going to see that, you’re going to be exposed for the little amount of work you put in.

So, just learning that and knowing that I can translate that into schoolwork, as much work as I put into my schooling, that’s the most I’m going to get out of it. So, taking on that personal accountability and responsibility has been huge that I definitely have taken from basketball.

■ What have you enjoyed about your time here with the Panther women’s basketball program?

Probably the biggest takeaway is just getting to know so many different people and getting to know the girls on the team.

Being four years at Belmont Abbey, it’s kind of the same people you’re around all the time and so, even this short amount of time, getting to know so many different people have been really cool and I’ve made lifelong friendships!

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