Teaching and Learning News

This post is drawn from an article on the Beedie School of Business News blog. Read the full article here.

For a group of undergrads (above) in the Beedie School of Business, classroom theory has been complemented by practical experience in the world of finance, with positive results on multiple levels.

The students act as managers of the Beedie Endowment Asset Management (BEAM) fund, an investment fund launched in 2011 with $5 million in Canadian equities, fixed income, and cash. It’s the largest undergraduate-run fund in Canada and is designed to give students hands-on experience in investment research, analysis, and trading in bonds and equities markets.

During the third quarter of this year, the fund yielded a return of just over 3% and a profit of $147,000, bringing the portfolio above its starting level for the first time since it was established. Ryan McCutcheon, a student who acted as chief risk officer and diversified sector co-manager of BEAM, notes that the program’s benefits go beyond dollars and cents: “Managing the BEAM fund is an incredible hands-on experience, one which I would recommend to anyone with an interest in finance. The calibre of technical knowledge and networking experience you gain from taking part in such a real-world exercise is amazing. Participating in BEAM is far above and beyond regular school and forces you to learn many things which you would not otherwise be exposed to.”

As part of their experience, the BEAM program participants travelled to Toronto for a tour of the city’s financial sector, including visits to the head offices of several banks and hedge funds and guided tours of some of the largest trading floors in North America.

“The trip to Toronto was an amazing experience and really gave us an insight into what it would be like to pursue a career in Canada’s financial hub,” says McCutcheon. “At each visit we had industry professionals waiting to talk to us about their roles and what it was like to work for each company, which was very impressive. Just being able to network with that level of professionals and hear their insights into the markets was a major highlight of the trip.”

The BEAM program is one of many initiatives at Beedie designed to extend student learning experiences beyond the classroom.

This post is drawn from an article on the Beedie School of Business News blog. Read the full article here.

Related links:

Beedie Endowment Asset Management program >>

Beedie School of Business News blog >>

Beedie teaching website and teaching news blog >>

Back in February, Shauna Jones, coordinator of the Beedie School of Business’s newly created Teaching and Learning Group, held a wine and cheese gathering for instructors. The 22 people who attended this inaugural meeting were asked to respond to a set of questions designed to elicit a group vision. Based on that input, the group developed the following vision and mission statement:

Vision: The international business education community will recognize the Beedie School of Business Teaching and Learning Group as a leader in engaged and experiential learning.

Mission: We are committed to the collective and individual development of scholarly teaching within the BSB. We engage faculty and students to foster effective outcome-oriented learning environments. We model and share successful scholarly best practices that encourage great students.

For now, the group is treating this text as a “draft” statement that will be modified on the basis of feedback from faculty members and students. The inaugural meeting also identified several themes of interest to instructors: “opportunities to learn with and from others, opportunities for teaching development, and opportunities to share with others.”

In response, two interactive sessions have been scheduled so far:

• Interactive polling, May 24, 2012, 2:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
• Language and writing, October 2, 2012, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.

Jones welcomes comments and suggestions on the draft statement and on the group’s direction and activities. She can be reached at shaunaj@sfu.ca. More information and a link to an online teaching survey for the Beedie academic community can also be found on the Beedie School of Business News blog.

Students in the Social Media and Business course achieved measurable results for their real-world clients.

Assistant professor Jan Kietzmann of SFU’s Beedie School of Business knows a thing or two about social media. In December, a paper he co-authored entitled “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media” won the 2011 Best Article Award from the journal Business Horizons.

Now he and instructor Ashish Gurung are using their new Social Media and Business course to develop the social media expertise of business students at SFU Surrey. The course, which was launched last fall, offers a mix of experiences: visits in class and via Skype with thought leaders like the University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist and representatives of organizations like Translink and Yelp; field trips to Vancouver-based social media players like Invoke and Hootsuite; and online engagement with classmates and instructors through Facebook and Twitter (using the hashtag #BUS450).

The most valuable component of the course, however, may well be the work done by the students themselves. As a final project, they develop social media campaigns for community clients or campus issues. The benefits, in terms of both student learning and community impact, have been remarkable:

• One group used Twitter and Facebook to generate more than 100 potentially life-saving registrations for the BC Transplant Society. The campaign’s social media messaging was endorsed and retweeted by, among others, musicians Jann Arden and Bif Naked, television personality Chris Gailus, and hockey legends Doug Gilmour and Brendan Morrisson.
• Another team raised more than $500 for the Surrey Food Bank and garnered more than a thousand blog views to raise awareness of the food bank’s role in the community.
• A third group used fundraising tweet-ups and other social media activities to collect more than $1500 for soccer-playing youth in Manamani, South Africa.

“Our students worked very hard,” said Kietzmann. “They truly engaged communities – local, national and international – and to that end I am very proud of what they accomplished.”

This is a condensed post. Read the full story on the Beedie School of Business News blog.

See Jan Kietzmann’s faculty profile page.