Chicago Trader Funds New Derivatives Center at University of Dayton To Give Students Real-World Experience in Booming Field

DAYTON, Ohio, May 15 /PRNewswire/ -- George Hanley, owner of two Chicago- based derivative trading firms, has given $520,000 to the University of Dayton to create a new, state-of-the-art center to give students real-world experience and a competitive career edge in the rapidly growing field.

One of only a few such centers in universities, the 20-station cherry-paneled room is equipped with the same hardware, software and real-time data used by practicing traders. It's also a classroom, offering a powerful learning experience for the next generation of aspiring traders.

"Building a center at the University of Dayton gives students a chance to have some real-world trading experience in one of the fastest growing businesses in the country," said Hanley, a 1977 management graduate. "When students come out of UD with this experience, they're two steps ahead because they've had that real-world, experiential learning.

"It's very important that they know and are familiar with the software and hardware that they'll be using as professional traders," Hanley said, noting that students can make simulated trades using live market data as well as historic, archived data. The center also offers the ability to make real trades as well.

Hanley and University officials cut the ribbon on the new center May 15. It's already in use for summer classes.

Establishing the center - one of just a few in the nation to focus on derivatives - puts the University of Dayton in the forefront of a new trend in business education, according to Elizabeth Gustafson, interim dean of the School of Business Administration.

UD's center will be distinctive by emphasizing quantitative skills and by affording students hands-on opportunities to work directly with TradeStation, one of the most popular trading platforms, Gustafson said. Another advantage of the program will be the interaction students will have with experienced traders who will be brought in to teach and lecture, she said.

"The center will also operate as an interdisciplinary program, coordinating with the mathematics, computer science and engineering departments to provide learning opportunities for a wide variety of students," Gustafson said.

Hanley, president of Hanley Group and chairman of Infinium Capital Management, has been involved in the design and construction of several trading rooms including a recent multi-million dollar facility for Infinium, said he brought what he learned from those experiences to the design of the new UD facility.

University of Dayton President Daniel J. Curran said Hanley's gift will build an important new capacity for the business school.

"Mr. Hanley is well-known for his ability to build successful businesses. We are pleased and honored he's helping us increase our capacity for applied learning in such a distinctive and innovative way," Curran said. "He is helping us build our unique brand of business education."

The UD School of Business Administration already emphasizes learning by doing: finance students manage a portfolio of more than $8 million of the University's endowment, entrepreneurship students are involved in running real businesses, and MBA students act as consultants to local firms on management studies.

Hanley explained that derivatives encompass a wide variety of trading instruments, including options, futures, commodities and even stock indexes. The field is rapidly growing.

Hanley began his trading career in 1977 as a runner at the Chicago Board of Trade, following in the footsteps of his father who began his brokerage career in 1923 as a runner. Hanley traded derivative products at numerous exchanges worldwide and found his niche at the CBOT Soybean Options pit. He founded Hanley Group in 1986 and developed a training program with an emphasis on sound, disciplined trading and emerging technology.

BACKGROUND: The University of Dayton is Ohio's largest private university and a top-tier national university with sponsored research totaling $75 million annually. As one of the top-10 Catholic universities in the nation, UD emphasizes transformative education and prepares students for leadership and community service in the Marianist tradition. The University of Dayton is nationally recognized for its approach to finance and business education, which integrates hands-on learning with theory and allows students to apply learning through running real businesses and investing more than $8 million of the school's endowment. Its entrepreneurship program has been rated the fifth- best in the U.S. for the past two years by Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review. For more about this story and the University of Dayton visit www.news.udayton.edu.

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Source: University of Dayton

CONTACT: Cilla Shindell, University Communications, +1-937-229-3257,
shindell@udayton.edu

Web site: http://www.udayton.edu/
http://www.news.udayton.edu/

2008-05-15 18:37:20 0363545 PRNEWSWIRE