Business Students Receive Scholarship Awards for Presentations

By Brandon Wallace '17

Five Foster College of Business students won awards at the annual Student Scholarship Expo, which featured nearly 100 research and creative projects.

Research by quantitative finance graduate students Jason Sippel, of Lombard, Illinois, and Tyler Beason, of Mattoon, Illinois, received Dean’s Awards.  Additionally, Dean’s Awards were given to finance majors David Kim ’15 of Bellevue, Washington, and Louis Paucot ’15 of Dunlap, Illinois. Quantitative finance graduate student Anna Galstyan, of Armenia, received an honorable mention commendation.

“At the Foster College of Business, we are very proud of all of our students who participated in the 2015 Student Scholarship Expo,” Dean Darrell Radson said. “Our students get to present research that they not only have worked hard on, but feel passionate about, to judges with impressive academic and professional backgrounds. The Expo is a true collaboration among students and faculty with impressive results.”

Beason’s project was titled “Calling Out Managers: The Use of Options in Investment Funds”, and examined the different investment strategies employed by managers.

“It is important to me to showcase the things that we learn in class,” Beason said. “I chose to study mutual funds that use options because it is a trend that is fairly new but growing rapidly, so research on it is lacking.”

Galstyan said she participated in the Expo in order to sharpen her presentation and research skills. Her presentation was titled “The Construction of an Ex-ante Empirical Risk Premium Measure for Equity.”

“A highlight of the Expo is that the people who are judging are from various disciplines, thus allowing you to present in a way that everyone can understand,” Galstyan said. “The expo also helps improve presentation skills that will help you succeed both academically and professionally.”