Legacy Partnerships
Transforming Dreams into Reality at the College of Business and Technology
Craig Conrad, DBA Dean, College of Business & TechnologyFinance & Commodity Trading Lab
WIU College of Business and Technology PROJECT
BREAKDOWN: Summary
Western Illinois University College of Business and Technology seeks to remodel a highly visible classroom space into a financial trading laboratory designed to give students real-time experience with both traditional investment instruments and advance training in commodity markets, merchandising, futures, and options. The lab will improve students’ financial literacy, bring a real-world reality to concepts taught in the classroom, and will provide a training platform and teaching facility for trading, dynamic simulations, and technical analysis tools needed by the investment professional. Training provided in the lab will enable students to understand financial and commodity trading concepts and create solutions for real world situations, especially in use of industry investment and trading platforms. The lab will help WIU build on the successes obtained by our students with previously limited resources and meet the needs of the future workforce.
Space renovation, including electrical upgrades and telecommunication infrastructure
Multi-monitor student workstation computers
Collaborative workspace configuration with dynamic live ticker
Financial Informatics: Live and Historical Data Feeds (i.e. Bloomberg, CQG, Thomson Reuters, Firstcall, Datastream, Morningstar, and others)
Large format presentation monitors, faculty workstation/control panel, and full remote classroom capability
Recent Accomplishments
Over the past five years, the WIU Commodity Trading Team has successfully competed in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group Trading Challenge. In 2018, the team finished 18th out of a 600 two round team competition, beating teams from much larger institutions, including Arizona State, Wake Forest, Cornell, Yale, University of Missouri, and University of Illinois. In 2019, the competition was completed in one round, with WIU finishing in the top 11% of 409 teams. In 2020, the success continued as the team finished in the top 8% of 503 teams, once again rating higher than their counterparts at University of Illinois, Northeastern University, and Rutgers. The team has been led each year by Dr. Jason Franken, who holds a PhD in Agricultural and Consumer Economics and a Master and Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics.
Project Timeline
Stage 1
Finance/Commodities Trading Lab
Base Funding: basic equipment including space configuration/build out, workstation furniture, base computer hardware, software support for commodities, and limited other financial software.
Stage 2
Enhancement of Lab Capabilities: acquisition of multi-year terminal funding and supportive software is now based on an annual subscription fee. Multi-year funding is crucial to maintaining the lab.
Expected Goals and Outcomes
The lab will create hands-on education experiences where students can assume the role of “live information consumer” to commodity brokers, producers, buyers, processors, traders, and speculators. It will expand student career and learning opportunities and decision making skills by providing stateof-the-art trading platforms and simulations in multiple fields.
Specific courses projected to utilize the Trading Lab include, but are not limited to:
•Ag 220 - Introduction to Agribusiness Concepts
•Ag Econ 333 - Agricultural Marketing
•Ag 349 - Agribusiness Management
•Ag Econ 443 - Agricultural Finance
•Ag Econ 447G - Commodities Markets and Future Trading
•Ag Econ 455G - Advanced Agricultural Marketing
•Ag Econ 457G - Market Profile
•Fin 496G - Futures and Options Markets
•Fin 575 - Advanced Portfolio Management
•Econ 465G - Energy Economics
•SCM 330 - Warehouse Management
•SCM 340 - Transportation Management
•SCM 411 - Global Supply Chain Management
•SCM 465G - Risk Management
•SCM 470G - Inventory Management
•SCM 539 - Transportation and Warehouse Management