CAZENOVIA, N.Y. — Cazenovia College believes a new laboratory space provides an “added sense of career realism” for its students taking finance and accounting courses. The lab includes the same types of industry-utilized data technology, business-day amenities, and “precise working environment” that students are likely to see when they begin work in finance and accounting […]
CAZENOVIA, N.Y. — Cazenovia College believes a new laboratory space provides an “added sense of career realism” for its students taking finance and accounting courses.
The lab includes the same types of industry-utilized data technology, business-day amenities, and “precise working environment” that students are likely to see when they begin work in finance and accounting careers.
Following recent remodeling and installations, a room in the school’s Eddy Hall now functions as a new finance and accounting-program lab. The lab has computers, software, and workstations for an instructor and up to 24 students.
The space is now equipped with digitized informational displays, five 60-inch monitors, a 75-inch-display TV, and about 75 feet of LED (light-emitting diode) tickers.
The tickers display stock prices and market indices from around the world, streaming continually updating data on screens around the room’s perimeter.
Community Bank, N.A.; the J.M. McDonald Foundation, Inc.; and a grant from Empire State Development helped Cazenovia College fund the new space and outfitting the lab, the school said.
The creation of the finance and accounting-program lab on campus is part of Cazenovia College’s larger goal to recruit students who want to pursue finance and accounting majors or minors. The effort to equip the lab as a realistic financial trading space is “core to the College’s ongoing mission of providing ‘Real Life Learning for Real Life Success,’ offering sophisticated, state-of-the-art facilities and technologies usually found primarily at larger universities but while providing a personalized, small-school campus experience,” per a college news release.
Cazenovia College implemented its finance program to prepare students for business careers, such as financial analyst, along with the financing activities of a commercial or investment banker, treasurer, controller, budget director, financial consultant, financial planner, portfolio manager, investment advisor, and broker.
Louis Marcoccia, director of the finance program, and Jill Hebl, chair for accounting and finance, also contend that finance is a “great area of study to combine with other Cazenovia College degree programs,” such as accounting, hospitality, equine management, or fashion design/fashion merchandising, for students who may want to own and operate a business.
“The program establishes a wonderful foundation for anyone interested in a major, a dual major, or a minor in finance,” Marcoccia adds. “Finance is on the front burner of personal and business decisions, and it needs to be understood and properly applied by decision makers to achieve immediate and long-term aspirations and targets.”
Cazenovia College pursued the investment in the finance and accounting program based on statistics showing that the finance field has one of the fastest growing group of occupations, Marcoccia notes. The school cites data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that the industry is expected to expand at a rate of 30 percent before 2024.
