$250,000

Today, I have the opportunity to blog in behalf of Carly because she has been ill this week.

How would you spend $250,000? Barbie dolls, GI Joe, trip to Thailand? I found exactly that experience through the investments course when I was a student.

I graduated from SUU in 2007 with a degree in Finance/Economics. I had the opportunity to take the investment courses at SUU which allowed students to invest real money in the stock market. At the time it was $250,000 (which is still a lot of money to a college student) that we were allowed to invest. Here is a picture that I took with my cell phone back in 2007 of me in the investments lab (please note that my cell phone at that time was an old flip phone LG VX6000 and did not have a high resolution camera) Can you see me through the pixels?

Many hours were spent in this lab during that year. There were a lot of ups and downs in the stock market that year. It caused a lot of stress because your grade is based on how well you do with your money, but it was worth it. Professor Steven Harrop allowed us to compare our investment against a benchmark. As long as our investment did better than our benchmark (which could be a composite of multiple indices – dow jones, s&p 500, etc) we would get a good grade. I remember one day where the stock market dipped and I thought we would not be able to pass the class because we lost so much money. Professor Harrop taught us how to make money in the stock market even in situations like we experienced that semester. He helped us to know what to look for in companies for investment purposes. By the end our group and class made money. After paying taxes on capital gain, the rest of the money goes to a scholarship fund. Here is proof that we passed the class. Mike Ulrich and I at graduation.

The amount that the class is now $300,000 thanks to a donation by D.A. Davidson & Co. I don’t know of too many other schools that give this type of hands on experience to their students.

I have a great love for the SUU School of Business: It is AACSB accredited. The professors are amazing because of how much they care about students as individuals along with providing real world experience and the classes taught me a lot to prepare me for the “real world”. There are also opportunities to study abroad including a chance for students to earn a dual degree from a University in France and Southern Utah University.