A little bit of Wall Street has arrived at Harris-Stowe State University.
Students at the historically black college now have access to a state-of-the-art trading room known as the Wells Fargo Finance Education Center. The university partnered with Wells Fargo Advisors, the St. Louis brokerage affiliate of Wells Fargo, to bring the center to fruition.
“This investment is all about opening doors,” says David Kowach, president of Wells Fargo Advisors. “It’s about us building a pipeline of great talent and diverse team members.”
Inside the center, students will find a ticker that streams real-time market information. They can also use Wall Street software to create and manage investment portfolios. The center is tied directly to the curriculum of the university’s Anheuser-Busch School of Business.
“It gives our students the opportunity to go from the theoretical perspective in the classroom to a practical perspective that prepares them for the workforce,” says Dwaun Warmack, president of Harris-Stowe State University.
He adds the center will give students an edge in the competition for jobs. “A student having this type of facility, live ticker, a chance to understand the markets—when they are [ready to] graduate, it makes them extremely marketable… When you think of minority students in this profession, there’s not a lot, and so having a center like this will give our students a [leg] up.”
Non-business school students will also have access to the center through personal finance courses, where the room will be used for discussions on investing. Harris-Stowe plans to open the center to the community for educational opportunities, including certification programs.
This center is the only one of its kind created from a partnership with Wells Fargo in the state of Missouri. The university and Wells Fargo also work together every semester to give students internship opportunities at the firm.
“I see this partnership as being a long-term partnership that’s going to get even stronger as we actually move forward,” says Kowach. “We’re neighbors [with the university]. I don’t think there’s a single business that separates us from each other. We ought to use that as a strategic advantage to do more together.”
Source: stlmag.com
