Business school wants to change dialogue around personal finance in Utah
UVU Bloomberg Lab, Money Management Resource Center, Entrepreneurship Institute opening on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday.
Zach Zufelt, center, teaches Justin Erlandson how to download the PassportXpress app, which eliminates the need for a plastic student ID card, at Utah Valley University Wednesday. Zufelt is the director of operations at PassportXpress, a student start-up.
UVU Bloomberg Lab, Money Management Resource Center, Entrepreneurship Institute opening on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday.
Santiago Gallardo, right, teaches a fellow Utah Valley University student how to download the PassportXpress app, which eliminates the need for a plastic student ID card, at Utah Valley University Wednesday. Gallardo is the founder of PassportXpress.
Steven Allred, a Utah Valley University senior business management student from Highland, compares equities on a Bloomberg terminal in the new Woodbury School of Business Bloomberg Lab Wednesday.
Business is booming in Utah County, and students at Utah Valley University might now have a better chance to become engaged in that movement.
UVU’s Woodbury School of Business recently launched a variety of new resources to give business, finance and accounting students a greater competitive edge as they move out into the business world. On March 22, the school opened its new Bloomberg Lab, complete with 12 Bloomberg terminals. The lab is one of about 500 labs of its kind in schools across the nation, but according to Cary Wasden, finance professional in residence at Woodbury, it’s one of only a handful being effectively used within the school’s curriculum.
“We’ve integrated this into their learning, and students use this lab as part of their classes. The info on Bloomberg is very deep, but also very broad, and the system isn’t easy to use. It’s so hard to master, that those who know how to use it get paid very, very well,” Wasden said.
More than 80 percent of all financial firms use Bloomberg for their main source of financial news and information, according to Wasden. In institutional finance circles, Bloomberg is seen as the leader, and the information Bloomberg provides is supposedly unparalleled.
Students receive their first exposure to using the terminals in finance, marketing and accounting classes. However, before they even walk in the lab, they have to go through a series of video lessons to simply learn how to use the system. Then, their class assignments center on effectively using the systems.
“When students step in here, they’re going to walk out of here with incredible knowledge and skills,” Wasden said. “We bring them in here, train them, and then they can step into an internship environment where they are set to go from day one. This is a huge deal.”
Wasden also hopes the Bloomberg Lab has an effect on the surrounding community as well, and “changes the dialogue” surrounding personal finance.
“We need to speak finance better. This is so critical. Our generation doesn’t have the benefit of pensions, and social security can’t be counted on. There’s no industry looking out for us. We have to manage our investments and retirement ourselves,” he said. “These millennials, when we get to personal finance, they sit up and stop being bored, and pay attention. They’ve seen their 65-year-old dad working as a greeter at Walmart, and it’s not going to happen to them.”
In addition to furthering the world of personal and business finance, UVU aims to help those millennials, and other like-minded entrepreneurs, achieve their dreams of successfully growing an idea. In the UVU Entrepreneurship Institute, students are crafting and launching business ideas with a built-in support group.
UVU students Santiago Gallardo and Zach Zufelt launched their business, PassportXpress Wednesday, and said they could not be where they are now without the institute. Sitting on his balcony in Saratoga Springs, Gallardo had the idea for the business about nine months ago, which is an app and platform that puts all the usability of a student ID card directly onto a smartphone. In addition to checking out books, purchasing meals and other campus services, or riding the bus to and from school, the app allows students to interface directly with the college.
PassportXpress has major business mentors behind it, including Chad Olson, David Bailey and Kurt Brown, three local business experts Gallardo connected with through the Entrepreneurship Institute. With their help, he and Zufelt are now finalists in the 2016 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge through the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute at the University of Utah. On April 9, they will present their final pitch and find out if they win the $40,000 grand prize.
Whether or not they win, Gallardo said they’ve “already won so much with all the help I received from the Entrepreneurship Institute.” Gallardo and Zufelt are currently in talks with other local colleges and universities to adopt the platform.
“You can’t and shouldn’t go it alone in the entrepreneur world,” said Mark Seastrand, director of the Entrepreneurship Institute. “We offer incredible consultative resources at students’ disposal to help them focus on their idea, and create a viable business model that will answer tough questions to determine whether their concept has business legs.”
Local Business
