Morgan State University, a historically Black educational institution in Baltimore, has recently launched the Student-Managed Investment Fund (SMIF), a program that provides real-world portfolio management experience to undergraduate students majoring in accounting and finance.
The program allows student members to invest real money, giving them the experience needed to gain practical skills that will open the door to successful careers in finance after graduation. The SMIF was provided with $120,000 in initial funding, raised in part by Morgan State’s Graves School of Business and Management. The majority of seed funding came from students’ prior winnings in national business case competitions.
The students involved with the SMIF integrate their work with their undergraduate coursework and activities in the Morgan Business Center’s Capital Markets Lab, a financial laboratory that provides market data, news, and analysis from several exchanges, brokers, and media services. George Micheni, director of the Capital Markets Lab, will serve as the SMIF’s program manager.
“The Lab is the ideal venue for the SMIF, because it [provides] essential resources required for the successful operation of the fund,” says Micheni. He adds, “I think this new [program] is going to expand our opportunities more than we can imagine.”
