Students may throw their faces down on their desks in despair, but they won”™t have to worry about disappointed clients or losing their jobs when things head south in a big way.
They”™ll be wheeling and dealing on the “trading floor” on the campus of SUNY New Paltz, not on Wall Street, thanks to a $100,000 donation by the Pasternak Family Foundation.
Hadi Salavitabar, dean of New Paltz”™s School of Business, said Kenneth Pasternak”™s generous gift is a “great start for what he hopes will eventually resemble a full-fledged trading floor.” The new trading room is located in van den Berg Hall, which was renovated last year and was officially dedicated Oct. 19.
Pasternak, a 1977 graduate of the school, is chairman and founder of Chestnut Ridge Capital, a private hedge fund in New Jersey. He co-founded Knight Capital Group with John Leighton, with an estimated market value of $5 billion in 1999. That same year, Pasternak won the Ernst and Young National Entrepreneur Championship. Pasternak says the new trading room”™s potential for teaching business students Wall Street”™s inner workings will help them when they are doing business in real-time corporate America.
“We are starting out in a classroom environment where students will be at desks with computers, but we”™ll have a direct connection to the trading floor with numbers flowing across the screen, just as they do on Wall Street,” said Salavitabar. “Eventually, we hope to grow this into a true replica of what they will experience in the business world.”
Salavitabar”™s son is currently studying business in Boston. “I don”™t blame him,” said Salavitabar of his son”™s decision to attend a different school while basically following in his father”™s footsteps. “After all, who wants to have dad looking over your shoulder in college? But we have plenty to talk about when we are both home.”
For Pasternak, helping fund a trading room for his alma mater seems a natural progression. He sat on the boards of governors for both NASDAQ and the National Association of Securities Dealers.
SUNY New Paltz offers Bachelor of Science degrees in accounting, finance, general business, international business, marketing, and management with concentrations in accounting, finance, international business and marketing. The school was recently selected by Newsweek as one of the “hottest 25 schools in America in 2008.”
The college”™s Web site is www.newpaltz.edu.
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