Finance

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our webinar about the Masters of Science program in finance at the University of Illinois, Springfield. We're going to give just a couple seconds for everyone to get on the webinar platform and then we will get going with our presentation.

OK. Well, welcome everyone. My name is Catherine Kleeman. I am part of the admissions team here at the University of Illinois, Springfield. Before we get started, I have a couple housekeeping items to go over so that you're aware the webinar is being recorded and will be made available for viewing. So don't feel like you have to take frantic notes or anything within your screen share. You will see that there is a closed captioning option at the bar in the upper right hand corner. It's the little button with the CC on it.

Right next to it.

Is the option to make your video full screen. If you would prefer that. You may also toggle on and off your chat window if you do not want to see the chat. If you should need to re sync your audio or video at any point in time during the presentation, just refresh your browser and that should clear up any issues you're having. We would love to hear your questions in the chat so feel free to post those throughout. We will be looking at questions at the end of the session.

So we'll put a pause on those until later and we'll go through those. I know that there are a lot of people on today. So thank you very much for joining us. And with that, I'm going to introduce you to Circan Karatis from our finance program. Thank you, Doctor Caratis for joining us today.

Hello everyone, do you hear me OK?

Yes, you're great.

Alright. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming to this presentation. I really appreciate it. So today I will be talking to you about our Master of Science Ms. in Finance program at University of Illinois, Springfield.

OK, so my name is Serkian Carrades and an easy way to remember my name is to ask who can and the answer is Sir Ken. So I have a PhD and as well as the CFA charter and I received my CFA charter around 2000.

Sorry, I received my CFA charger in 2022 and I'm really excited about helping my students prepare and then also, you know, take the take the CFA exam as well. So that's something that I wanted to, I wanted to emphasise before we get started.

OK. Let me give you an overview of our MSN finance program. So our program is 30 credit hours and it's fully online.

So.

What it means is that it's asynchronous, so there are no live classes. There are no requirements for you to join live classes. Now. We do offer office hours over zoom if you need to ask some questions, but they are not required either.

This is something that you need to keep in mind, and our program is STEM certified.

Which shows that it's at a. It has a certain quality to it.

OK. So STEM programs are very popular. They have better employment opportunities. So this is something that you need to keep in mind.

And our semester follows 8 week schedules. So courses run for eight weeks and then and then the next next set of courses start. So right now we are in spring one and around mid March spring one semester will end and then we will start spring 2 semester there will be new courses.

So this format allows students to complete their studies faster.

And we have students taking.

One or more than one 8 bit classes at at one time depending on their schedule.

Next thing that I wanted to emphasize is that UH UAS offers an UAS provides an affordable education. So our tuition is very competitive and that makes a big deal especially when you hear about all that programs that cost so much money and that students are really struggling to deal with the loans that they borrow to finance those. OK. So we are very proud of how accessible our program is in terms of its cost.

And our program is also AACSB accredited.

Around 5% of the business schools in the world are AACSP accredited. So that shows that our program runs out of an institution with a strong backing and support from AACSB. And this is something that you need to keep in mind when you look for master program. So if you tell somebody that hey, my degree is from a AACSB accredited school, that immediately shows that it it it, it is at a certain.

Quality, so this is a very important metric for you to keep in mind.

OK, so let's talk about the admissions. We require official transcripts, There is no GMAT or GRE required, and in terms of prerequisite courses.

We do. We do look for background in micro and macroeconomics as well as accounting. And if you don't fulfill these requirements, there's one course that you take that will help you get an exposure to all those three areas.

So this is something that you should you should pay attention. But it's just in one course you get to learn about all those things and it helps you prepare. It helps you prepare for the next step, which is the regular coursework in the in the program.

OK, let's look at our program. So we have 8 required courses and then we have two elective courses. So these require courses cover a wide range of topics in finance from behavioral finance to financial markets and institutions. So we try to provide a broad financial education and give you the tools that you can use to target different areas in in finance.

So our focus is broad, but we do have cool courses that help you.

Do all of expertise in in certain areas as well.

And then we have two electives right now this management, accounting and topics in finance. Those are our elective classes. And for topics in finance, we currently have real estate finance, which has been a very, very popular course as an as an elective.

When you enroll in our program, you will be participating in the management of Student Management Investment Fund, which we just call Smith. And this, this fund is run by our students. When you take certain classes in those classes, you will be picking a publicly traded company, you will be valuing the company its equity and then you'll be writing an equity research report on what we should do in terms of investing in this particular company's stock.

And since you are doing this work, we call you analyst and you can put that information on LinkedIn on your resume. It's really a hands-on experience, OK, So the fund is managing real money. So you'll be basically your recommendations have.

Have an impact? OK, so you're not just recommending for nothing, you're recommending for this actual phone to make, to make actual decisions whether buy, sell, or hold.

As I mentioned, you know this fund will give you equity research experience as well as portfolio management experience. And then we provide our students access to Capital IQ. And Capital IQ is a very popular finance data platform used across many institutions. So you will be able to use Capital IQ to do research for your classes, for student management investment fund or for your just personal personal questions. This is something that we like to emphasise as well.

And this experience will boost your.

Options and and then you know as I mentioned earlier you can put this on your LinkedIn, you can put this on your resume. It will provide you with some talking points, right? You can write in your cover letter. You can go to an interview. You can tell them you know how this particular experience, how you pick this certain company and you did a valuation. You wrote an equity research report. All this you know matter when when the time comes for you to look for jobs and internships.

Speaking of jobs, so our program will help you target jobs in many different areas in finance from financial analyst to.

Jobs in the insurance sector.

So and and also if you are already working in a finance institution, this degree could also help you get a promotion or move to a better financial institution. So we have a lot, basically we have a lot of choices on what you can do with this.

With this degree. So that's something that I want to emphasize.

We talked about the CFA. There's also another charter called Certified Financial Planner Charter. Now our courses have content that you might find helpful. Studying for these certification exams myself, You know, I'm familiar with the CFA exams. As I said, I received my charter in 2022 and I have been a big advocate of the CFA Institute and the CFA programs.

I believe they add a lot of value to the people who go through them. So I often meet with my students on on how to prepare for these exams. You know kind of strategies on how to study and how to pass and and and from what I heard from them you know those conversations added a lot of value to to my students. And for certified financial planner you know we have courses on on personal financial planning and we also have standard courses in finance that cover.

Of the topics in this in this exam. So this is something that you may also you may also find helpful in your in your studies.

With that, I thank you for your time.

And and see you know if you have any if you have any questions I.

I haven't seen any questions come through just yet.

OK.

So we'll put the last call out there for any questions or of course you can reach out to Doctor Karatis in our finance department or someone in the admissions office.

Maybe I can ask them how many of you want to?

Want to do a master in finance? Not not necessarily at UAS, but just in general, like you really want to do a master in finance.

Feel free to drop your answers in the chat.

Feel free to choose a different institution, you know that's your choice, but I'm just curious to see to see your your preferences.

Or I guess we are still looking for.

Looking for answers which is OK.

That's all life is about.

So well.

Do they have my contact information or should I provide my e-mail here?

Sure.

Oh yeah, if you want to drop your e-mail in the chat, that would be great.

There you go one. Here's my e-mail address. Feel free to e-mail me anytime with your questions. I'll be happy to chat with you.

Talk to you more about our program, but thank you.

Great. Well, thank you all for joining us today. Thank you to our finance faculty for joining us as well and we hope that you have a great day. We'll see you all later.

Bye.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye, bye.