A ticker on a flashing marquee and nine large flat-screen televisions light up the walls of the newly opened 525-square-foot trading room at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry. The classroom, which remains dimly lit for better view of the screens, is filled with business students hovering over computer screens and poring over market data as they discuss what companies”™ shares they would buy and sell. The Bloomberg and CNBC news channels hum quietly on TVs in the back corners of the room.
Professor Charles Garcia, who teaches a course on organizational leadership and grades 40 percent of the coursework on public speaking, encouraged students to come up one by one and interact with their classmates while using the touch-board television screens.
With plans to teach macroeconomics and co-teach finance with School of Business Dean Ed Weis next semester, Garcia said the textbook approach is not enough to get students engaged in their learning. Not only do the students need practical skills to be successful on the job, but they need tools to mirror real work experience, he said.
After the college acquired Victory Hall, the building that once belonged to the Archdiocese of New York and operated as a Catholic high school, the School of Business got what they asked for: a trading room that replicates the Wall Street experience.
Under the leadership of Weis, a former managing director at Merrill Lynch, and business professors including Garcia, who worked for Bloomberg, the school built a curriculum using the Bloomberg for Education software to bring the world of finance into the classroom setting.
Students sit in front of computers that show real-time market information using a software program that delivers data, news and analytics, similar to the ones global financial professionals use.
“We want to help them apply professional skills in a professional setting,” said Garcia. “This is knowledge that can add value to them if they decide to work on Wall Street.”
Even for students who don”™t choose to go the Wall Street route, they”™ll have “industry knowledge at a young age,” which shows companies they understand how to “get real life market data” and “know how to trade and invest,” Weis said.
The trading floor adds an experiential component to the students”™ education, Garcia said. The School of Business has 10 students who have been placed on the fast track to getting internships with at least one Fortune 500 company through the college”™s business honors program. For one student, the trading room is an essential part of his learning experience.
“I was on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs for a mentorship program and it opened my eyes to what I need to learn and where I”™m at,” said Angel Cespedes, a sophomore in accounting, who also had a mentorship program at IBM. “Now I can practice and learn the hard, tangible skills I need in the trading room here to be excellent in the work field there.”
Cespedes added that with the knowledge he gained from using the software program in the trading room, he can monitor a company”™s performance, use that data to make real industry decisions and apply his knowledge about the financial market by having conversations with prospective employers during job interviews.
The College of Business and the board of trustees are exploring more ways to bring the finance world to life. One idea that”™s under review is setting aside a small portion of Mercy”™s endowment for business courses that teach investment strategies and allowing the professors and students to collectively invest that money in the market and monitor the growth of that investment.
“By the time that freshman gets to the investment management company, they”™ll have had experience managing a slice of real money,” Garcia said. “Nowadays, companies don”™t have the patience for one-year-long training programs, so we like to think our program is a transformative model that”™s application-based and very experiential.”
