For Lutz, The Solution to Their Business Needs Can Be Found at UNK

There’s a lot of talent in Nebraska. For companies like Lutz and their HR manager Robby Renshaw, weeding through all that talent can be a daunting task. Thankfully, Renshaw has found an ally in the University of Nebraska at Kearney, a place that makes her job overseeing recruiting much easier.

When Renshaw, a HR manager at Lutz, a business solution firm with locations in Omaha, Lincoln, and Grand Island, visits UNK, she knows she will be steered in the right direction. Thanks to the efforts of folks like Dustin Favinger, Director of CBT’s Career Center, Lutz is able to hire 10-15 UNK interns a year. In fact, 20-25 of the firm’s 315 employees are UNK alumni. 

Renshaw thanks “the partnership that has been cultivated” between UNK and Lutz for this level of success. She states that she always feels “so embraced and welcomed” by UNK and appreciates the “opportunity to get in front of the students.” But it’s more than the chance for her to speak to potential interns that keeps Renshaw, and Lutz, coming back to UNK year after year. It’s what she refers to as the “successful toolbelt” that UNK students are equipped with.

According to Zeke Abeyta, who is a senior at UNK majoring in Business Administration with an emphasis in accounting, the experiential learning that has been part of his College of Business and Technology courses has made the transition from student to intern much easier than expected. He states that both Lutz and UNK are “two places that are definitely willing to take you and believe in you.” In addition to the culture on campus that has resulted in him being more than prepared for his role as an accounting intern, he appreciates the way Lutz has made him “feel like staff” in the three years he has been interning for them. He knows none of this would have been possible if, during his sophomore year, Dustin Favinger hadn’t reached out to him. Although the idea of interning was “out of (his) comfort zone” he is grateful he had the opportunity to not only visit the booths at the UNK Career Fair in his freshman year but was also, a year later, able to become a recipient of Favinger’s uncanny ability to pair students with potential employers.

Renshaw, who has worked for Lutz for the past seven years, is grateful for the foresight of UNK to pair her firm with great talent such as Abeyta. She shares that she is thrilled that UNK puts so much effort into “building leadership skills” in their classes which helps her “identify talent” such as Abeyta. She shares that Lutz doesn’t “expect (their) interns to be experts” but she has been so impressed by students like Abeyta, who has been interning on a year-round basis, that she finds it “really hard to let him walk out the door” at the end of each workday.

Abeyta, who is scheduled to graduate from UNK in December, will finally be able to work full-time for Lutz. He can’t say enough about his coursework and how prepared he is to step into his profession. Thanks to working during the busy tax season in 2022, being an audit intern during the summer of the same year, and doing an advanced tax accounting internship during the spring of 2023, he will be able to start at a higher level at Lutz upon graduation. None of this would have been possible without the collaborative effort between UNK and Lutz. 

Renshaw, and those at Lutz, keep coming back to UNK year after year because they have discovered the pot of gold at the end of the business-talent-pipeline rainbow. Not only has UNK strategically planned campus events such as the Career Fair and Company Connections, but staff like Favinger take the time to reach out to her with potential interns. Renshaw is grateful for the way UNK is consistently “proactively thinking about Lutz.”

Although Lutz has been partnering with UNK for around a decade, they have no plans to stop. In fact, they are in the infancy stages of a scholarship plan. This, their newest partnership with UNK, is designed specifically to benefit accounting students. Lutz has a goal to provide “immediate impact on students” while also leaving a legacy behind. 

Renshaw, a self-proclaimed “perpetual student” who “graduated college and never really left,” is thrilled to have a strong relationship with UNK. With the ability to work so closely with the university, she has been able to build relationships with interns that has resulted in less turnover and a higher retention rate among Lutz employees. Students, like Abeyta, benefit by being able to quickly move into middle management and partnership positions.

When Zeke Abeyta looks back to when he was a freshman visiting the various booths at UNK’s Career Fair, he never would have imagined how much he would accomplish professionally while still a student. Now he knows that’s just the way it’s done at UNK. Not only will he have the 150 credit hours required for a CPA certification by graduation, but he will also be able to officially join the firm that has already begun to feel like his professional home. UNK has created an atmosphere that’s a win-win for their college students as well as businesses like Lutz. Robby Renshaw gushes about UNK’s “open lines of communication” and the partnership that has been “pivotal to (their) success” as a firm.  For UNK, anticipating future needs and providing solutions is simply the way they do business.