Most University business students have to choose to concentrate on either accounting or finance. If a new program in the Lundquist College of Business goes as planned, this decision won’t be necessary.
Today in Portland, the Lundquist College of Business will announce its newest addition: a Securities Analysis Center fusing accounting and finance, designed to educate and train students in the ways of modern securities markets.
The ProgramThe Lundquist College of Business’ Securities Analysis Center will fuse finance and accounting to provide experiential learning and train students in the ways of modern securities markets. The curriculum for graduate students will be implemented in fall 2008. The center is one of four at the business school that offer “tracks” rather than majors. |
The SAC will also focus on the East Asian markets, educating students on the differences between Asian and U.S. markets.
The SAC is one of four “centers” within the business school that do not offer majors, but are considered a “track” programs. Each has two primary goals: to provide experiential learning for students, and to fund interdisciplinary research in their area of interest.
“Partly it will help them get internships, which will help them get really good jobs,” said James Bean, dean of the business school. “The true home will be (Eugene), but many of its activities will be in Portland because that’s where the money management is. Many, if not all, of the donors are Portlanders.”
Six University business school alumni donated a total of $2.5 million to launch the SAC. An immediate task will be hiring a director.
The DonorsSix business school alumni donated a total of $2.5 million to launch the center: ? Jim Rippey: former president and director of Columbia Management Company and Columbia Trust Company ? Ron Sauer: founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Mazama Capital Management ? Eli Morgan: chairman and CEO of 2030 Investors, LLC; founder of Management Compensation Group Northwest and Resource Management Consultants ? Chuck Lillis: former CEO of MediaOne Corp. (now Comcast); co-founder and principal of LoneTree Partners ? Robert Jesenik: CEO and co-founder of Aequitas Capital Management ? Eric Sorensen: president and CEO of PanAgora Asset Management |
“It’s a great opportunity because, turns out, Portland is a significant regional money management center,” said Larry Dann, professor of finance and taxation at the business school. Dann said the SAC will train students to compete for skilled jobs centered in Portland.
Eventually, Bean said, the center will serve approximately 150 students a year, including about 30 graduate students. The track will start out only as a master’s program, but that won’t always be the case. Currently, the center is recruiting graduate students entering the University next fall. Bean said there are about 15 master’s students already interested in the track.
“This new center will be one of only a handful of such programs in the country and will provide a unique focus,” said University President Dave Frohnmayer in a statement. “The program’s graduates will also help fuel the growing investment industry in Oregon.”
The creators considered the only other similar program, at the University of Wisconsin, when mapping out the SAC, but the two are not identical.
“There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel if someone else has figured it out pretty well,” Dann said. “(This University’s program is) really balanced between accounting and finance, whereas theirs is pretty much finance-oriented.”
And while the two concentrations are closely related, there is a difference.
“Finance has to do with making decisions that use accounting information to help establish or determine value of things,” Dann said. “Accounting has to do with providing information to users, some of whom are finance people, regarding the financial performance of an organization.”
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