Berea College has long given its students real-life experience and entrusted them with managing aspects of College operations. Beginning in Fall 2016, we expanded this initiative in a new direction by granting students the opportunity to manage a $100,000 portfolio of equities on the U.S. stock market.
This initiative is called the Berea College Motley Fool Investment Club (BC-MF Investment Club), the product of a partnership with The Motley Fool, an Alexandria, VA-based organization dedicated to “helping the world invest —better.” Open to any student, the club meets regularly, headed by an executive board of students. This year, the board includes:
- Harry M. Tsiagbe, Lead Portfolio Manager and President
- Eugeniu Prodan, Research Analyst and Vice President for Administration & Treasury
- Starson Audate, Research Analyst and Vice President for Compliance & Taxes
- Minashsha Z. Lamisa, Research Analyst and Vice President for Outreach Services
- Syrine Bessaad, Research Analyst and Vice President for Outreach Services
- Benjamin E. Willhite, Research Analyst and Vice President for Communications
To become a board member, students must apply and be accepted by a selection committee, which includes Trustee David Chow, Dr. Ian Norris, Dr. Nancy Sowers, Jeff Amburgey, Harry Tsiagbe, and alumnus David Kretzmann ’14, who serves as liaison with the Motley Fool organization. In addition, five of the club’s board members will participate in the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute Research Challenge. The CFA Challenge is a global competition that provides students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis.
The BC-MF Investment club is an outgrowth of our financial literacy course (GST 186), which is taught each semester as part of the college’s Fresh Start programming, also developed in partnership with the Fool. Students who complete GST 186 are well prepared for participation in the BC-MF Investment Club.
The origin of the nest egg for the Club funds came from the Hillier Family Foundation in 1996. This generous gift had earlier been managed through the college’s BUS 346 Investments course. With the advent of the new club, the Hillier Foundation allowed us to transfer management of those funds to it.
When the Investment Club took over the portfolio, the corpus amounted to about $47,000. We’ve raised additional funds to bring the total to $100,000, placing, in the usual Berea fashion, enormous trust in the lives of great promise attending our school. Much of the new support came from members of the Motley Fool organization, which sees this activity as a model that might be replicated at other colleges and universities. The support of these new ‘investors’ is being matched by resources from the Ventures Fund, which is managed by the President’s Office. The Club will provide semi-annual reports on its activities and transactions to all ‘investors’ as well as to the Board of Trustees.
The club’s goal is to grow the initial $100,000 to $500,000. Upon reaching the goal, allocations from Club funds will be provided to the College according to the same formula under which endowment returns provide support, thus providing a stable, and sustainable contribution to the operating budget of the College. We thus expect the BC-MF Club to “do good while doing well.”