FInance Club meeting

Want your resume to stand out? Want to make contacts in the financial and banking world? Join the Finance Club and be noticed by recruiters. All Students are invited to the organizational meeting of the Finance club. The meeting will take place on Friday September 3rd at 12:30 PM in Murphy Auditorium, section C. Please bring $5 for dues and a calendar to mark off important dates. If you cannot attend this meeting and would like to join or if you have any questions, please contact
Richard Miller: millerra@sbu.edu.

How to register for clickers

Hi, I have had a few people ask how to register for clickers so:

1. Go to Einstruction.com and then click through to the student tab (on top) (be forewarned, Einstruction has been having server trouble of late so it may be slow.)
2. In a new window, you will be asked what school you go to (select St. Bonaventure from pull down window.)
3. You will be asked to select a course and input serial number of the clicker.
4. The class codes: for the 10:00 AM section: X2999U447. For the 11:30 AM section the code is T5454V213.
5. If you do not have the enrollment code/license number from the text, you will have to purchase an "enrollment code" at this point

I think it will be pretty self explanatory. I just walked through it and if I can figure it out, I am sure you can as well!

Finance Club Golf Outing

While the first Finance Club meeting will be next week, look for announcements, but for now:

The 1st annual Finance/Alumni Golf Tournament will be held on Saturday September 18, 2004 at Elkdale Country Club in Salamanca, NY. There will be a reception after the tournament in the Hall of Fame room in the Reilly Center where students will be able to talk with Alumni. For more information please contact Adam Babcock at babcocas@sbu.edu.

Introduction to Blogging

I included the following in the newslettter, but since some of you may not have been reading the newsletter, I thought it might be useful to include here as well.

What is a blog? A blog is nothing more than an easy to update website. This has taken the idea of a journal. (for example, :
“A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently.”www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

What makes blogs so cool?

Blogs are
1. easy to use.
2. often informal
3. can be read either online with a typical web browser or with special readers.
4. links can be saved (so rather than saving the whole newsletter, you can link just to the stories you want!)
5. are immune to spamblockers

For example, to read the FinanceProfessor.com blog with your browser, merely click through to it like you would any web site.
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

But it can also be read with a special reader. Why is this so valuable? Because the reader will go and “get articles” whenever the site is updated. This allows me to update the blog on an almost daily basis and you can select which stories you want. This is called syndication. Moreover, since your reader is getting the article, you have made it around the spam blocking software.

I have provided links to sign up via ATOM, RSS, or through your “my Yahoo” page. There are several free RSS readers and while I do not pretend to know which is best, I use RSSReader from RssReader.com and it very easy to use.
http://www.rssreader.com/
Here is the list from Google:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=free+rss+readers

Finance 401 Syllabus

Finance 401 Syllabus

As promised the syllabus is now online!

also I just looked and there are still a few seats left in each section, so tell your friends :)



BTW this weather is so bad! Feels like late September already!

Were your internships paid? The NY Times looks at the problems with unpaid internships

Sound familiar?
BTW I would still highly recommend you get an internship, even if it is non paying.

FinanceProfessor.com: The New York Times > Washington > Crucial Unpaid Internships Increasingly Separate the Haves From the Have-Nots
yeah I am cross listing this one...since I would imagine some of you might not be reading the news blog.

http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2004/08/new-york-times-washington-crucial.html

Finance Club trip to NYC

I have spoken with the alumni office and the finance club trip to NYC is tentatively scheduled for October 21st and 22nd.

As Steve (err Dr. Horan) is busy with overseeing the student run investment portfolio and his move to Olean (he got married this summer), I will be the faculty contact person on the trip. Which probably means no Friday night stay.

More details will follow both here and at Finance Club meetings. Stay tuned :)

jim

who just got a "new" desk ;) someone was throwing it out (literally--it was out by the dumpster) and two desks just fit in the office :)

Text and web page for class

Fin401mainpage: "Finance 401 Advanced Corporate Finance "

I have had a couple people ask me already what text etc we will be using. So here goes:


The text book is Brealey and Myers Principles in Corporate Finance. The newest edition. I think it is the 7th. I apologize up front for the price, but I can make it a bit better by telling you that we will also be using it for 402 and I highly recommend that you keep it for either other classes or for the real world as a reference. It is VERY good.


In addition to the text you will need a "clicker" and license. You will have to purchase it through the bookstore. In fact think you may get a discount if purchased together. I am not sure. The "clicker" is less than $5 and the license is about $15? So plan on about $20 additional. (this is needed even if you plan on sharing a book) Want to know what a clicker is? Check out http://www.einstruction.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=HigherEd.Display&Header=HigerEd They will be used in class. Details to follow.


I am also highly recommending (but not outright requiring) a WSJ subscription. I will talk more about it the first day of class. My thoughts on the WSJ are that it is simply great and a tremendous source of information. While it does require some time commitment, the level of writing (and thought) is vastly superior than what you will find on most TV shows or even in most popular newspapers. But because I will be having you reading quite a bit (text, blog, newsletter, papers), and the NY Times is available on campus for free, I am not requiring it.

Also the new 401 class website is up. It is not yet complete, but it is better than nothing.


What is expected from you in class?

I have been told that I ask too much of students. I do not think so, but I guess the reputation is not totally without merit. I do ask that you keep up with the reading and to think. I hate pure memorization and try to challenge you to think and apply the material.

Overall, I expect you to have fun, but to work hard. I will if you will. ---LOL...

Welcome to Class :) Or at least to the class Blog

Hi Everyone!

After finding out how much easier updating a blog is than having to update the website manually, I have decided that this blog will be used for class announcements, comments, etc. Of course the FinanceProfessor site will still be used for notes and other things.


For those of you who have had me before you should know that class is continually evolving and I am pretty flexible and willing to give up something that is not working, so this is all liekly to change, but the way I envision this working:

Suppose you want to know

• where a test is going to be givin: Look here
• when a guest lecturer will be coming: Look here
• answers to suggested problems: Look here (after the first week, when I will block access to just students in my classes)
• the time for next Finance club meeting: here I guess.
• class notes: look at FinanceProfessor.com or more specifically within Finance Classes
• Finance News and new articles: FinanceProfessor.com's Blog
• Finance research articles: FinanceProfessor's Summaries, Newsletter, and FinanceProfessor's blog

I understand that this method of class communication will be slightly different than what you are used to, but I really do think this is the way classes will be done in the future.

In some ways I am recognized in this area. My working paper How to Use the Web in a Finance Class: A Web Enhanced vs. A Web-Centered Model was one of the early works that tried to explain how to use technology in a finance class room and I have participated in several FMA Roundtables on Using Technology in the Finance Class Room.

Through the FinanceProfessor.com site and at these Roundtables, I have had the opportunity to meet with some of the best finance teachers in world and to have seen some of what is being used at these Univeristies. I do believe that we are at the forefront of this movement. But with any new technology, some things will work and some will not. I encourage you to let me know what is working. I will try very hard to incorporate more of what is working and drop what doesn't work as well.

This semester (Fall 2004) I will be teaching two sections of Finance 401 and one section of MBA 604 (HIII). THis blog will be used for both.

I will post more shortly, including what text book we will be using, what is a blog, and much more.

But to close, I want to let you know that I think this will be fun and a great learning experience for us all!

jim