Ticker tape is running today for the first time at Belmont University as New York’s Wall Street is recreated in a state-of-the-art classroom setting for students studying investment and portfolio management. The trading room, which is a first for a college or university in Tennessee, was made possible through a donation from loyal Belmont benefactors R. Clayton McWhorter and Stuart McWhorter, Belmont officials said.
Similar facilities are used to teach trading, portfolio construction and risk management at schools including Clemson University in South Carolina and Bentley College west of the Boston area, according to Assistant Finance Professor Dr. Joe Smolira of Belmont’s College of Business Administration. For the whole Nashville City Paper story, click here.
Other press coverage:
Belmont opens financial trading room – Nashville Business Journal online
Belmont opens electronic securities trading floor – NashvillePost.com (subscription only – click here to see image.)
Belmont becomes mini-Wall Street – Nashville City Paper
Belmont Opens State’s First University-Based Electronic Financial Trading Room
The first and only electronic financial trading room located on a Tennessee college or university campus opened today at Belmont University bringing Wall Street to Belmont Boulevard for students learning investment and portfolio management.
The financial information laboratory is equipped with the latest technology including a nine-foot data wall, a 60-inch plasma monitor and a 12-foot ticker tape lighting up the back wall. There are 14 workstations with which to access and analyze financial data, plus a Bloomberg station with licensed Bloomberg hardware and software, for a total of 15 workstations. Each is designated as a Seat on the Trading Floor of the Belmont Exchange. Students began taking classes in the lab on Tuesday, January 25 at 9:30 a.m.
NBJ Praises Belmont’s Entrepreneurial Focus
The Nashville Business Journal praises Belmont University in an editorial in its Jan. 21, 2005, edition, for an ongoing effort, spearheaded by the Center for Entrepreneurship, to infuse entrepreneurial education throughout all of the university’s academic departments.
“Teaching entrepreneurial strategies to students in a business track is certainly nothing new, at Belmont or other universities. What is a departure is training students in other disciplines how to think like entrepreneurs,” says the Nashville Business Journal. “More students are entering college with the idea of forming their own enterprises. Whether they ever start their own businesses or just work in someone else’s, any training they receive that sharpens their critical thinking skills will only benefit them, their businesses – and all of us.”
Colleges take entrepreneurship to the student masses – Nashville Business Journal
Belmont University is riding the crest of an educational wave with a program to infuse entrepreneurial education into all departments. “Belmont recognized it was important to our curriculum; that programs could benefit from entrepreneurship education,” says Jeff Cornwall, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont.
Business programs, both undergraduate and graduate, have been teaching entrepreneurship for years. What places Belmont on the cutting edge is its plan for students majoring in theater, English or political science to learn the same entrepreneurial skills as business majors.
The story is not on the Nashville Business Journal’s website. Click here to see a readable image of the story.
Belmont stores sell students on entrepreneurship – The Tennessean
Feedback is the newest of three student-run retail stores at [Belmont] University, which has made entrepreneurship a major focus. All three stores have prime real estate on the ground floor of Belmont’s Curb Event Center, which is along busy Belmont Boulevard. The university set aside space for the student retail operations when it built the center in 2003. The other two stores, a CD shop called Reverb Media and an art gallery/graphic design studio called Blvd., opened last spring and have been slowly but surely making names for themselves on campus and, to some extent, in the neighborhood.
Byrd Lives Rich Life as Belmont Coach – Nashville City Paper
Sure, Rick Byrd may not make the kind of money the Rick Pitinos of the world command, but there is a difference between being rich and having a rich life. In the world of coaching, Byrd is on top. His accolades at Belmont speak for themselves: 372 wins, NAIA Hall of Fame, successful transition to Division I, 21 wins last year and an NIT appearance. The Bruins have also meshed into the perfect league for them in the Atlantic Sun Conference. Never is that more evident than when the Bruins and fellow A-Sun member Lipscomb get together, as they do Friday night at Curb Event Center, better known as the Byrd House.
Psi Chi Receives Award
The Belmont University Psi Chi chapter won a Regional Chapter Award for the Southeastern region of Psi Chi for colleges with enrollments of under 5,000. Psi Chi chapter officers submitted an application and supporting materials for the award in the fall and the award is based in part on effective chapter activities during the previous three years. The award comes with a check for $500 to the Belmont Psi Chi chapter. Congratuations to Psi Chi and their adviser, Lynn Jones. Psi Chi is the national honor society in psychology.
Belmont to Host Tsunami Relief ConcertNashville’s Music Community Unites for Jan. 26th Benefit At Massey Performing Arts Center, an Unprecedented Collaboration of City’s Music Industry
Belmont University has teamed with Nashville’s famed music industry to bring about “An Evening for Restoration: Music City Comes Together for Tsunami Relief,” a special benefit concert scheduled for 7 p.m., Wednesday, January 26, 2005 at the Massey Performing Arts Center on the Belmont campus. The one-night only benefit concert, which is bringing together a number of Nashville’s major music organizations as well as artists from a variety of genres, will benefit World Vision, the international relief agency which has thousands of staff members on the ground working in the stricken South Asian region where more than 160,000 people have died.
Belmont to Host Major Gathering on Blogging and Journalism
Belmont University announced today that the university’s New Century Journalism program will host BlogNashville, a three-day multi-part conference on journalism, blogging and the emergence of the new citizen-participatory journalism, in May 2005, along with the Media Bloggers Association.
In the past two years, bloggers have played a key role in holding media and political figures accountable, including former Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott over his racially insensitive remarks about Strom Thurmond, former New York Times editor Howell Raines in regard to the Jayson Blair scandal; exposing John Kerry’s “Christmas in Cambodia” story as a lie, and, most recently, the “RatherGate” media scandal in which bloggers exposed the forged documents at the heart of a 60 Minutes II story about President Bush’s National Guard service, a story CBS later retracted. Also, last year, bloggers were invited to cover both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention, and Time magazine even selected one blog, PowerlineBlog.com, as its first-ever “Blog of the Year” for its role in RatherGate.
“Blogs and bloggers are playing an increasingly prominent role in media criticism, politics and campaigns, and even in grassroots journalism, bringing video and personal accounts to the world from the recent tsunami disaster in Asia, for example” says Bill Hobbs, online media writer and blogging coach in the office of University Marketing and Communications at Belmont University. “BlogNashville will bring many of the new medium’s top practitioners and thinkers to one place to discuss the current and future of blogging.”
Belmont Features Acton Institute Co-Founder in Discussion of “The Entrepreneurial Vocation”
With names such as Martha Stewart, WorldCom and Enron dominating the public’s perception of business, does anyone believe that it is still possible to be both profitable and moral? And when was the last time that a prominent religious leader affirmed the necessary role of business people in American society?
Belmont University will help the Nashville-area business and faith communities address those questions Feb. 15 with a special free event featuring the Rev. Robert Sirico, co-founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, hosted by Belmont’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Center for Business Ethics.
The registration deadline is Feb. 8. To register call 460-6601. For a brochure with registration information, click here.
