Final Research Paper
Harry Nguyen
Professor Pihakis
ENGL2089
November 13, 2013
Research Paper
As a Finance major student, I always want to learn as much information as I can about this field. Therefore, I always study hard in all of my major-related classes. However, I feel that coming to class every day is not enough because all I can do most of the time is listen and write down the lecture of my professors. After my freshman year, I decided it was time to change my way of my learning, and I started looking for a suitable student organization I could join. I was hoping to find one that would teach me more about my major and also helps me get more friends and connection from professionals in the field. Finance Club comes to me as the best match and I have started coming to its events regularly since the start of my sophomore year.
To people outside the Lindner College of Business, finance, economics and accounting may seem alike because all of them are the kinds of job that simply works with money. Some of my friends that do not major in business cannot even tell the differences between them. However, personally Finance attracts me the most because in the business world, finance people can work everywhere. While Accounting focuses most on bookkeeping, financial statements and tax-related problems, Business Administration works with management issues and Economics is related to big matters such as supply and demand, international economics, political influences, Finance includes all of these things. To become a professional in the field of Finance, people need to have skills both theoretically from economics and business administration and practically from accounting. In addition, Finance is closely related to stock-trading, which is one of the most difficult and important market in the world. This is the reason why I chose Finance as my major at the University of Cincinnati.
I first heard about Finance Club through one of my Indian friends, a very exceptional student who received a full-ride scholarship from University of Cincinnati for his undergraduate degree. At the end of freshman year, he ran for the president position of the club and encouraged me to become of member of it. However, to gain access and get information of the club, I started to come to the club meetings every month since the beginning of my freshman year to observe the practice of members and talked to them about their thoughts of the activities here. It is not difficult to participate in the meeting because Finance Club opens the meetings to everyone, member or not, who has interest in Finance and wants to learn about the experience of speakers who are professionals in the field.
Looking to the history of the club, I found it very fascinating because the founders of the club had goals similar to mine at the time they founded Finance Club. In 2008, two students of the Linder College of Business, Brian Coffey and Chris Trimbach got the idea of creating a new organization on campus. They were inspired by a University of Cincinnati alumni working for a private equity firm with men and women from some of the most prestigious Universities in the world. He told them something valuable: "The biggest difference between students that go to Ivy league schools and students that go to a state school like UC is that the students who go to Ivy league schools have known what they wanted to do since they were in preschool, and UC students usually don't know what they want to do until they get into their senior year and finally start to take their finance classes." These words urged Coffey and Trimbach to find a new way of studying that not only helps themselves prepare better for their career but also helps other classmates change the way of thinking about education. Therefore, they started a new club on campus and called it University of Cincinnati Finance Club.
In 5 years of operation from 2008 to 2013, the shape of this club has changed significantly. By interviewing some members of the club who have participated for a long time, I have learned that last year 2012 was the worst year of the club in both activities quality and members recruiting. In 2012, a graduate student was elected as the president of Finance club and in response, the club changed the focus from undergraduate students to mainly graduate ones. This was not a positive alternation because undergraduate students have always made up a big portion of the club since the day it was founded and they are the people who need the most help from Finance to gain knowledge and connections in the field. In addition, the meeting’s quality decreased dramatically with only three speaker meetings a semester instead of six and only about twenty members came to each meeting. Compared to the usual amount of fifty people coming to this year’s meetings, twenty is an embarrassing number and reflects the unattractiveness of the club to UC students last year. Furthermore, one of the most regrettable things happened that year was that Finance Club could host only a ten people professional trip to New York because of lack of funds and in that ten members, only two were undergraduate students. The reasons were that the executive board could not get sponsors from Lindner College of Business and Student Council and not many undergraduate students found the club worth attending at that time. These problems raised a question from the undergraduate members of the club and provoked my friend to run for the president of the club to get the club back on track. After elected as the president of Finance Club in 2012-2013, my friend started bringing back the original ideas and purposes of the club and helping it become attractive again to the students of Lindner College of Business again.
According to “Social integration and the role of student societies in higher education: an exploratory study in the UK”, “the findings demonstrated that involvement in a student society did contribute to the social integration of students, it was found to be a key factor in reducing student attrition and dropout rates” and “student societies could be viewed as a resource that with proper attention and development and could provide real benefits for both students and institutions” (Gallagher). Personally, before deciding to come to the club meeting, I was afraid that it would take too much time from me. However, after reading the article above, I was no longer hesitant to go every week because of the benefits this club brings to me. The Finance Club is open to all majors, especially those who might be interested in a career in finance. The Club encourages students that are interested in switching to a major or career in finance to come to events and find out if Finance is for them. One of the Finance Club's purposes is to extend the education of finance students into an area not normally covered in class, career education, which is a comprehensive educational program that focuses on individual growth. This is important because every business student has different interest in a branch of finance. A student may want to work in investment bank, while other wants to have a job in stock trading. Therefore, the club helps UC students become competitive candidates for jobs by helping them find their career goals and what they need to do to accomplish those goals. To do this, they made a program that can help maximize all the potentials for its members and it has multiple steps, which require members to actively participate in the club. First, Finance club offers a forum for networking by bring firms to UC. It haves five meetings per quarter, two professional trips a year, a Faculty event and a social event per quarter. Furthermore, at the end of this year, the club publishes an Annual resume book containing all the resumes of its members and the activities it did in one year and then sends it to many companies throughout the US who has a contract with the Club. Also, the club hosts a visit to Redefining Investment Strategy Education (RISE) Conference, where students can meet with many global firms and learn about their way of doing business. Also, one of most important goals of the club is to keep good relationships with Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Cincinnati Chapter, Finance Faculty, College of Business, other student organizations, the University of Cincinnati and the community because the club appreciates the supports from everywhere it goes. To me, the most different thing about this club compared to others is the connection it brings to members. No business organization on campus can get students as many opportunities to meet experts in the field like Finance Club. The meetings and the trips all have the same purpose to help members to reach out to as many people as they can that can not only write a reference letter for them but also become teachers outside class who can share the knowledge that only can obtain from years and years of observation and practice.
I consider the meetings of Finance Club the most important and valuable part of this community because it is the chance for students to actually learn real experience outside the book from professionals in the field and get guided by them. For example, with Professional Speakers meetings, the club brings in speakers in order to gain further insight about specific career paths, broad industry events, and various topics in Finance for the members. My first observation of the club was its professional speaker meeting on October 30th, when Mr. Tim Schigel, who serves as the fund manager for Cintrifuse came and talked about his career experiences. His company, Cintrifuse is the result of Cincinnati's business community wanting a bigger start-up culture, and more innovation. Start-up culture is very valuable for business students who are looking to become future entrepreneurs because it is the way they will define their companies and make consumers see the uniqueness of them; therefore, his presentation completely opened all of Finance Club members’ eyes by knowing how he became a successful investor. Talking to some members after this meeting, I found out that they are all amazed to know how a man can make his company and products different to all other firms in the century that seems like every need of a person is served by at least one company in the world. This influences them to think about making new and unique ideas that can create new products for consumers. As stated in the book “Has Finance Made The World Riskier?”, “developments in the financial sector have led to an expansion in its ability to spread risks. The increase in the risk bearing capacity of economies, as well as in actual risk taking, has led to a range of financial transactions that hitherto were not possible, and has created much greater access to finance for firms and households. On net, this has made the world much better off.” (Rajan) The world of finance is continually expanding with new kinds of transaction coming out every year. To members of Finance club, this is an opportunity for them to take by following up with the new changes in the world. The basic and old information in textbook cannot help them do it, but if they get updated from people who are currently working in the field, they will get prepared to catch these chances in the future.
In addition, the club generally hosts at least one Faculty event per year aimed at strengthening the relationship between students and faculty members. The professors at University of Cincinnati has deep knowledge and experience in the field, therefore they can guide the students to choose the right path after graduation. Furthermore, networking events include the trip to Dayton for RISE conference, which brings students to meet industry professionals from around the world. RISE is a nonprofit program that hosts an annual series dedicated to help businessmen with conference in which entrepreneurs exchange ideas and experiences, serving thousands of entrepreneurs a year. Named as “Must-Attend 2013 Conference for Entrepreneurs”, RISE is considered as a must-go experience for all the members of the club I have talked to. Also, members of the club highly desire to join the two professional trips to New York and Chicago, one in the winter and one in the summer to meet with top-tier firms of the US there. This is the chance for them to meet with directors and CEOs from all the Big four firms including Deloitte, PwC, Ernst & Young, KPMG, which are the four largest international professional services networks, offering audit, assurance, tax, consulting, advisory, actuarial, corporate finance, and legal services and also other Wall-street companies. Not many people, especially students, can have the chance to meet these people because they are all busy running their companies. This fact shows a big benefit that Finance Club can give to its members compared to other organization on campus.
One of the most active and important practice of Finance Club is the stock-trading simulation game that is available for every member of the club. Each member is theoretically given 1 million “online” dollars to start his or her investment. The members can use their money to buy whatever stock they want if they think that stock’s price will raise. They can sell their stocks when the price goes down to get rid of the lost. For example, a member bought 1000 shares of Microsoft when the company informed to the public that the new Xbox One console would come out at the end of this year. At that time, because of the high expectation and demand of consumers for the new console after 7 years of playing the previous one, the price of Microsoft stock would rise rapidly. However, when Sony, its main competitor announced that their new PlayStation 4 console would be sold $100 cheaper, the member sold his 1000 shares because it was bad news for Microsoft and would make the price go down. This is just a typical example of what members of Finance Club discuss daily on their Facebook group. They share the news that influences the market with others and also their opinions about how long the price will be up and down. Without the game, many members would not get used to the stock-trading language until the day they work in this field. For instance, they would not know how to look at the bar-charts to understand the fluctuation of price, or “dark cloud cover” would be a meaningless phrase if they do not see the situation when price is quickly going up. Furthermore, all the statistics about red and blue numbers of price with a little triangle next to them that people see every day on TV or the internet would seems like unimportant until they know that a price can change dramatically in just ten seconds. In addition, the start-up stories of various companies are also valuable discussions that attract most members to join in because it is always interesting to know how a person can build up a strong company from complete scratch. All of these information are extremely helpful text of the Finance club because it helps members gain experience on how they play the game and furthermore how they will use their real money in the future to invest. At the end of the academic year, the person getting the most profit from the capital they are given at the beginning will win a prize. No matter what the prize is, the most valuable thing that each member obtains will be their knowledge in the field of financial investment that they cannot get if simply just going to school every day. The people I interviewed shared this opinion with me because they found both happiness and knowledge from playing an online game. In all the interviews i did, the most memorable one was with Jack Monda, a new member of the club. He told me that since playing the game, finance.yahoo.com, the stock-trading news website has become his homepage on his computer because he did not want to miss any new information that related to the stocks he bought in the game and has used any time he is free to check news on the website. He even decided change his major from Accounting to Finance because he found his enthusiasm in the stocks world and wanted to become a trader in the future. He is currently the best player in the game, having the highest profit from the original one million dollars.
Finance Club is one of the best communities to join that I have found on campus since coming to University of Cincinnati. It satisfies the members’ desire to gain real experience outside class through discussion and networking. Also, it is a place for finance major students to make new friends that have similar hunger of knowledge in the field of business. I find my passion by coming to the club’s events and see many members have the same feeling with me. Next semester, I will definitely join the club because I want to become a financier in the future and cannot think of any other place where I can find better connections and guidance like Finance Club.
Source
Gallagher, Damian, and Audrey Gilmore. "Social Integration And The Role Of Student Societies In Higher Education: An Exploratory Study In The UK." International Journal Of Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Marketing 18.4 (2013): 275-286.Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
Rajan, Raghuram G. "Has Finance Made The World Riskier?." European Financial Management 12.4 (2006): 499-533. Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
Professor Pihakis
ENGL2089
November 13, 2013
Research Paper
As a Finance major student, I always want to learn as much information as I can about this field. Therefore, I always study hard in all of my major-related classes. However, I feel that coming to class every day is not enough because all I can do most of the time is listen and write down the lecture of my professors. After my freshman year, I decided it was time to change my way of my learning, and I started looking for a suitable student organization I could join. I was hoping to find one that would teach me more about my major and also helps me get more friends and connection from professionals in the field. Finance Club comes to me as the best match and I have started coming to its events regularly since the start of my sophomore year.
To people outside the Lindner College of Business, finance, economics and accounting may seem alike because all of them are the kinds of job that simply works with money. Some of my friends that do not major in business cannot even tell the differences between them. However, personally Finance attracts me the most because in the business world, finance people can work everywhere. While Accounting focuses most on bookkeeping, financial statements and tax-related problems, Business Administration works with management issues and Economics is related to big matters such as supply and demand, international economics, political influences, Finance includes all of these things. To become a professional in the field of Finance, people need to have skills both theoretically from economics and business administration and practically from accounting. In addition, Finance is closely related to stock-trading, which is one of the most difficult and important market in the world. This is the reason why I chose Finance as my major at the University of Cincinnati.
I first heard about Finance Club through one of my Indian friends, a very exceptional student who received a full-ride scholarship from University of Cincinnati for his undergraduate degree. At the end of freshman year, he ran for the president position of the club and encouraged me to become of member of it. However, to gain access and get information of the club, I started to come to the club meetings every month since the beginning of my freshman year to observe the practice of members and talked to them about their thoughts of the activities here. It is not difficult to participate in the meeting because Finance Club opens the meetings to everyone, member or not, who has interest in Finance and wants to learn about the experience of speakers who are professionals in the field.
Looking to the history of the club, I found it very fascinating because the founders of the club had goals similar to mine at the time they founded Finance Club. In 2008, two students of the Linder College of Business, Brian Coffey and Chris Trimbach got the idea of creating a new organization on campus. They were inspired by a University of Cincinnati alumni working for a private equity firm with men and women from some of the most prestigious Universities in the world. He told them something valuable: "The biggest difference between students that go to Ivy league schools and students that go to a state school like UC is that the students who go to Ivy league schools have known what they wanted to do since they were in preschool, and UC students usually don't know what they want to do until they get into their senior year and finally start to take their finance classes." These words urged Coffey and Trimbach to find a new way of studying that not only helps themselves prepare better for their career but also helps other classmates change the way of thinking about education. Therefore, they started a new club on campus and called it University of Cincinnati Finance Club.
In 5 years of operation from 2008 to 2013, the shape of this club has changed significantly. By interviewing some members of the club who have participated for a long time, I have learned that last year 2012 was the worst year of the club in both activities quality and members recruiting. In 2012, a graduate student was elected as the president of Finance club and in response, the club changed the focus from undergraduate students to mainly graduate ones. This was not a positive alternation because undergraduate students have always made up a big portion of the club since the day it was founded and they are the people who need the most help from Finance to gain knowledge and connections in the field. In addition, the meeting’s quality decreased dramatically with only three speaker meetings a semester instead of six and only about twenty members came to each meeting. Compared to the usual amount of fifty people coming to this year’s meetings, twenty is an embarrassing number and reflects the unattractiveness of the club to UC students last year. Furthermore, one of the most regrettable things happened that year was that Finance Club could host only a ten people professional trip to New York because of lack of funds and in that ten members, only two were undergraduate students. The reasons were that the executive board could not get sponsors from Lindner College of Business and Student Council and not many undergraduate students found the club worth attending at that time. These problems raised a question from the undergraduate members of the club and provoked my friend to run for the president of the club to get the club back on track. After elected as the president of Finance Club in 2012-2013, my friend started bringing back the original ideas and purposes of the club and helping it become attractive again to the students of Lindner College of Business again.
According to “Social integration and the role of student societies in higher education: an exploratory study in the UK”, “the findings demonstrated that involvement in a student society did contribute to the social integration of students, it was found to be a key factor in reducing student attrition and dropout rates” and “student societies could be viewed as a resource that with proper attention and development and could provide real benefits for both students and institutions” (Gallagher). Personally, before deciding to come to the club meeting, I was afraid that it would take too much time from me. However, after reading the article above, I was no longer hesitant to go every week because of the benefits this club brings to me. The Finance Club is open to all majors, especially those who might be interested in a career in finance. The Club encourages students that are interested in switching to a major or career in finance to come to events and find out if Finance is for them. One of the Finance Club's purposes is to extend the education of finance students into an area not normally covered in class, career education, which is a comprehensive educational program that focuses on individual growth. This is important because every business student has different interest in a branch of finance. A student may want to work in investment bank, while other wants to have a job in stock trading. Therefore, the club helps UC students become competitive candidates for jobs by helping them find their career goals and what they need to do to accomplish those goals. To do this, they made a program that can help maximize all the potentials for its members and it has multiple steps, which require members to actively participate in the club. First, Finance club offers a forum for networking by bring firms to UC. It haves five meetings per quarter, two professional trips a year, a Faculty event and a social event per quarter. Furthermore, at the end of this year, the club publishes an Annual resume book containing all the resumes of its members and the activities it did in one year and then sends it to many companies throughout the US who has a contract with the Club. Also, the club hosts a visit to Redefining Investment Strategy Education (RISE) Conference, where students can meet with many global firms and learn about their way of doing business. Also, one of most important goals of the club is to keep good relationships with Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Cincinnati Chapter, Finance Faculty, College of Business, other student organizations, the University of Cincinnati and the community because the club appreciates the supports from everywhere it goes. To me, the most different thing about this club compared to others is the connection it brings to members. No business organization on campus can get students as many opportunities to meet experts in the field like Finance Club. The meetings and the trips all have the same purpose to help members to reach out to as many people as they can that can not only write a reference letter for them but also become teachers outside class who can share the knowledge that only can obtain from years and years of observation and practice.
I consider the meetings of Finance Club the most important and valuable part of this community because it is the chance for students to actually learn real experience outside the book from professionals in the field and get guided by them. For example, with Professional Speakers meetings, the club brings in speakers in order to gain further insight about specific career paths, broad industry events, and various topics in Finance for the members. My first observation of the club was its professional speaker meeting on October 30th, when Mr. Tim Schigel, who serves as the fund manager for Cintrifuse came and talked about his career experiences. His company, Cintrifuse is the result of Cincinnati's business community wanting a bigger start-up culture, and more innovation. Start-up culture is very valuable for business students who are looking to become future entrepreneurs because it is the way they will define their companies and make consumers see the uniqueness of them; therefore, his presentation completely opened all of Finance Club members’ eyes by knowing how he became a successful investor. Talking to some members after this meeting, I found out that they are all amazed to know how a man can make his company and products different to all other firms in the century that seems like every need of a person is served by at least one company in the world. This influences them to think about making new and unique ideas that can create new products for consumers. As stated in the book “Has Finance Made The World Riskier?”, “developments in the financial sector have led to an expansion in its ability to spread risks. The increase in the risk bearing capacity of economies, as well as in actual risk taking, has led to a range of financial transactions that hitherto were not possible, and has created much greater access to finance for firms and households. On net, this has made the world much better off.” (Rajan) The world of finance is continually expanding with new kinds of transaction coming out every year. To members of Finance club, this is an opportunity for them to take by following up with the new changes in the world. The basic and old information in textbook cannot help them do it, but if they get updated from people who are currently working in the field, they will get prepared to catch these chances in the future.
In addition, the club generally hosts at least one Faculty event per year aimed at strengthening the relationship between students and faculty members. The professors at University of Cincinnati has deep knowledge and experience in the field, therefore they can guide the students to choose the right path after graduation. Furthermore, networking events include the trip to Dayton for RISE conference, which brings students to meet industry professionals from around the world. RISE is a nonprofit program that hosts an annual series dedicated to help businessmen with conference in which entrepreneurs exchange ideas and experiences, serving thousands of entrepreneurs a year. Named as “Must-Attend 2013 Conference for Entrepreneurs”, RISE is considered as a must-go experience for all the members of the club I have talked to. Also, members of the club highly desire to join the two professional trips to New York and Chicago, one in the winter and one in the summer to meet with top-tier firms of the US there. This is the chance for them to meet with directors and CEOs from all the Big four firms including Deloitte, PwC, Ernst & Young, KPMG, which are the four largest international professional services networks, offering audit, assurance, tax, consulting, advisory, actuarial, corporate finance, and legal services and also other Wall-street companies. Not many people, especially students, can have the chance to meet these people because they are all busy running their companies. This fact shows a big benefit that Finance Club can give to its members compared to other organization on campus.
One of the most active and important practice of Finance Club is the stock-trading simulation game that is available for every member of the club. Each member is theoretically given 1 million “online” dollars to start his or her investment. The members can use their money to buy whatever stock they want if they think that stock’s price will raise. They can sell their stocks when the price goes down to get rid of the lost. For example, a member bought 1000 shares of Microsoft when the company informed to the public that the new Xbox One console would come out at the end of this year. At that time, because of the high expectation and demand of consumers for the new console after 7 years of playing the previous one, the price of Microsoft stock would rise rapidly. However, when Sony, its main competitor announced that their new PlayStation 4 console would be sold $100 cheaper, the member sold his 1000 shares because it was bad news for Microsoft and would make the price go down. This is just a typical example of what members of Finance Club discuss daily on their Facebook group. They share the news that influences the market with others and also their opinions about how long the price will be up and down. Without the game, many members would not get used to the stock-trading language until the day they work in this field. For instance, they would not know how to look at the bar-charts to understand the fluctuation of price, or “dark cloud cover” would be a meaningless phrase if they do not see the situation when price is quickly going up. Furthermore, all the statistics about red and blue numbers of price with a little triangle next to them that people see every day on TV or the internet would seems like unimportant until they know that a price can change dramatically in just ten seconds. In addition, the start-up stories of various companies are also valuable discussions that attract most members to join in because it is always interesting to know how a person can build up a strong company from complete scratch. All of these information are extremely helpful text of the Finance club because it helps members gain experience on how they play the game and furthermore how they will use their real money in the future to invest. At the end of the academic year, the person getting the most profit from the capital they are given at the beginning will win a prize. No matter what the prize is, the most valuable thing that each member obtains will be their knowledge in the field of financial investment that they cannot get if simply just going to school every day. The people I interviewed shared this opinion with me because they found both happiness and knowledge from playing an online game. In all the interviews i did, the most memorable one was with Jack Monda, a new member of the club. He told me that since playing the game, finance.yahoo.com, the stock-trading news website has become his homepage on his computer because he did not want to miss any new information that related to the stocks he bought in the game and has used any time he is free to check news on the website. He even decided change his major from Accounting to Finance because he found his enthusiasm in the stocks world and wanted to become a trader in the future. He is currently the best player in the game, having the highest profit from the original one million dollars.
Finance Club is one of the best communities to join that I have found on campus since coming to University of Cincinnati. It satisfies the members’ desire to gain real experience outside class through discussion and networking. Also, it is a place for finance major students to make new friends that have similar hunger of knowledge in the field of business. I find my passion by coming to the club’s events and see many members have the same feeling with me. Next semester, I will definitely join the club because I want to become a financier in the future and cannot think of any other place where I can find better connections and guidance like Finance Club.
Source
Gallagher, Damian, and Audrey Gilmore. "Social Integration And The Role Of Student Societies In Higher Education: An Exploratory Study In The UK." International Journal Of Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Marketing 18.4 (2013): 275-286.Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
Rajan, Raghuram G. "Has Finance Made The World Riskier?." European Financial Management 12.4 (2006): 499-533. Business Source Complete. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.