Colin Powell School Board of Visitors member Liz Weikes
The Economics and Business Department at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at The City College of New York received an investment to establish the Bloomberg Lab at CCNY.
The new lab, located in the Tech Center on the first floor in CCNY’s Cohen Library in the North Academic Building, will feature 12 Bloomberg Terminals©. It is made possible in part by a generous donation by Liz Weikes, a managing director at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management and a member of the Colin Powell School’s Board of Visitors.
“Bloomberg Terminals© are part of the lifeblood of finance and business today,” she said. “Our students’ professional success requires that they become expert in how to use them. I am thrilled to be able to help bring them to our students at the Colin Powell School and CCNY.”
In addition to Weikes’s donation, the terminals are supported by educational innovation funds from the City University of New York. The Bloomberg Lab moves The City College closer to its goal of launching an undergraduate degree in business administration in 2025. The new B.B.A. degree will offer three tracks: finance, management, and entrepreneurship. The finance track’s curriculum will be comparable to what is offered at other CUNY colleges with Bloomberg Labs, including Baruch, Brooklyn, and Lehman.
In the meantime, CCNY continues to develop and expand its finance program, which offered five new finance courses in Spring 2023, and hired faculty with experience in both academia and the private sector. Many of the program’s new courses will rely on the Bloomberg Lab to train students.
The Bloomberg Lab is central to the finance program’s ambitions, said its director, Paul D. Clifford, a lecturer in economics and business who previously worked in the financial sector.
“The Bloomberg Terminal© is an integral tool within the finance industry that is used to access, compile and analyze financial information,” he said. “Most of the finance courses which form the new program will entail financial and data analysis and involve experiential learning using Bloomberg Terminals©. Hence, the need to secure a Bloomberg Terminal© Lab to ensure the new degree’s finance track was fit for purpose and able to deliver the optimal pedagogical outcomes for students.”
The terminals organize data and research across a vast range of fields beyond business and finance to include health sciences, law, journalism, and public policy. They are of use to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Access to the terminals in the lab will be open, subject to availability and to the needs of classes.
Six rising juniors have been selected as Bloomberg Ambassadors to support the new terminals.
Students can receive training and obtain Bloomberg Terminal© certifications through the Bloomberg Market Concepts and the Bloomberg Finance Fundamentals programs.
“Students entering the worlds of business and finance need to know how to use Bloomberg Terminals©,” said Andrew Rich, the Richard J. Henley and Susan L. Davis Dean of the Colin Powell School. “My sincere thanks for Liz Weikes for making this Lab a reality for our students at the Colin Powell School.”
About the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership
Established in April 2013, the Colin Powell School is home to the social science departments at CCNY as well as the core leadership development and public service programs of the College. With almost 4,000 students, and graduating the most CCNY students annually, the Colin Powell School mission is to transform the nation’s most diverse student body into tomorrow’s global leaders. Half of our students are immigrants; more than seventy percent are first-generation college students. Eighty percent are people of color. Most come from lower income backgrounds. The Colin Powell School and City College remain among the most effective engines of economic and social mobility in the United States. The School is led by a faculty dedicated to the highest standards of research and to the university’s democratic and public obligations. Read more about the Colin Powell School.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi (now Lightcast) puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. This year, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Syd Steinhardt
212-650-7875
ssteinhardt1@ccny.cuny.edu