The Ashland University Eagle Investment Group reached its 25-year milestone of being a group on campus. The group is a class offered for two semesters with the first class in the fall semester and the second class in the spring semester.
Associate Professor of Finance Director Dennis R. Witherspoon teaches this course at the Dauch College of Business ans Education, Classroom 113. “It is a student managed investment fund,” Witherspoon said. “We manage $2.4 million of the university’s endowment fund.”
An endowment fund, as Witherspoon describes it, is money that donors have given and then sits in a pool of funds; consequently, the earnings that the fund generates can be used for student schol-arships.
The Eagle Investment Group manages a portfolio: “It’s holding more than one asset and it’s making sure that you don’t hold too much of one thing and not enough of another,” said Witherspoon.
“So, students and I kind of kid about the diversification thing and making sure [the students] understand. I always tell them ‘If you don’t know the answer to a question just throw out the term diversification’,” Witherspoon said. “Basically, what that means is we make sure we have stuff and all different kinds of investments, so it’s not just stocks.”
Each student is assigned different sectors of a portfolio such as, but not limited to, technology, financial and consumer staple.
One of the requirements is selecting an investment to research for presentation to the rest of the class. Then, the students say yes or no to the investment with Witherspoon having no veto authority in the process. He coaches them on whether the investment might be good or not for the university and their group.
Despite a lot of hands-on experience with money this class is used to teach students.
“I tell students, like one of my colleagues told me years ago: ‘You’re not selling anything, you’re solving people’s problems,” said Witherspoon.
“They need insurance, they need investments for their retirement for their kid’s college just to have additional income coming in. So, you’re solving problems.”
He also ensures that as the students are managing the portfolio they don’t have too much in one area.
All this experience allows the students to apply for a job in this area and say they’ve done all these different things in Eagle Investment Group and the other person that’s next to you hasn’t had that explains Witherspoon.
He also adds that despite Artificial Intelligence (AI) rising that it still remains to be seen how it factors into this down the road.
“But I do think, despite that, there’s a certain human element that will never go away.”
To join the class students can register after taking the following prerequisite: FIN*422 Security Analysis, FIN*330 Principles of Investment, FIN*228 Financial Management and ACCT*201 Financial Accounting.
