JOPLIN, Mo. — While the old standbys of calculators and supply/demand graphs are still there, Brian Nichols wanted his students to experience the excitement of an ever-changing stock market, bustling trading floor and constant stream of information.

Nichols, assistant professor of finance and economics at Missouri Southern State University, found a way to include all those things in the new Edward Jones Investment Center on the second floor of the Robert W. Plaster building. The center is dedicated to Jim Goodknight, a 1963 MSSU graduate and longtime area Edward Jones representative.

The trading room features a 12-foot ticker above its windows, 32 workstations, a Bloomberg dual-monitor computer workstation and two 46-inch LCD television sets streaming live financial data. Financial software in the room includes Bloomberg, S&P; Research Insight, Otis and @Risk. The software provides students with information about portfolio construction and management, risk management, security analysis, investments and financial trading.

“I’ve caught a lot of students just standing in front of the room watching the ticker,” Nichols said. “It’s an amazing marketing tool for prospective students, and we’re very excited about having that type of student here.”

Cost of the trading room infrastructure is $170,000, and the projected annual cost for software licensing and maintenance is $20,000. Such costs would have been too high in the past, but a more visual School of Business is emerging at Missouri Southern, and it is building stronger relationships with the local business community.

The investment center was made possible by donations from more than 50 Edward Jones representatives and the home office in St. Louis. The transition was started years ago, and Brad Kleindl, dean of the School of Business, said the efforts are falling together at the same time.

MSSU’s Board of Governors last summer changed the name of the building that houses the School of Business from Matthews Hall to the Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center in honor of a seven-figure donation by Plaster, a 1948 graduate of MSSU. The gift was the largest in the Missouri Southern Foundation’s history.

“What students are looking for when they go to college has changed,” Kleindl said. “Because of the nature of the job market and the cost of a college education, students are very focused on their careers early on, so things like internships, mentoring and job experience become very important. Students need to have a full resume when they graduate.”

The new focus includes adding classes, revising course titles and increasing degree options. New courses include business career development, a requirement for freshman business majors, and financial statement analysis, for students who are interested in taking the certified public accountant exam. The general business degree has been restructured for a more individualized education, and a new minor in entrepreneurship has been added, along with classes in forming a new business and managing innovation and technology to support it.

Another new minor, in transportation and logistics, is an example of what Kleindl is calling industry partnerships. Local trucking companies Contract Freighters Inc., TDC, R&R; and Sitton Motor Lines saw a need for trained managers for the carrier industry and approached Missouri Southern.

“A business school is an important economic-development tool for any community looking to expand its employment base, and have high quality employees to provide for new businesses opening and the expansion of existing businesses,” Kleindl said. “We’ve been able to more fully embrace the vision of helping students move into the job market and helping the economic development in the region. Over the last three years, the faculty has been able to step up their role, not only with students, but with the business community.”

Money has started to pour into the business school from area businesses, individuals who graduated from the school and government grants. Aside from the Edward Jones and Plaster donations, the School of Business recently was awarded a two-year federal business and international education development grant to pay for two study-abroad trips that correlate with MSSU’s theme semesters - France 2007 and China 2008.

The trips are open to MSSU alumni, students and faculty members. Funding from the grant also will allow the School of Business to develop two new business classes: international human resource management in 2007 and corporate social responsibility in international business in 2008.

Along with that grant, a federal grant of $183,000 was approved to help local companies improve their international exports. MSSU will match the funds for a total of $366,000. In addition, MSSU will have a series of 10 seminars on international trade that began earlier this fall. More than 200 companies in the Springfield-Joplin area export to international markets.

To go along with the new investment center, the Missouri Southern Foundation gave Nichols and his students in the portfolio management course $300,000 to begin investing this semester and gain real-world experience in financial investing.

Nichols said the senior-level students are selected through an application and interview procedure. They must research the companies in which they want to invest and present their findings to an advisory board for approval.

“It’s amazing for students to be able to graduate saying they’ve already managed real money for a real client,” Nichols said. “It’s about as hands-on an experience as you can get. So far, the first semester’s been very successful, and they’ve done an excellent job.”

Other operations tying local companies to the school include the Small Business Development Center at the college, recently honored as the top small-business center in the state, and the Heartland Procurement Technical Assistance Center, which helps businesses in Missouri and Kansas get government contracts. Since its inception in 2002, it has helped local businesses get more than $200 million in government contracts.



Melissa Dunson writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe.







School of Business

Missouri Southern State University’s School of Business attracts nearly 33 percent of declared majors to the college.

About 200 students graduate from the School of Business each year. At any given time, about 1,000 business students attend the university.

Source: Brad Kleindl, dean of the School of Business, and www.mssu.edu