Associate Professor of Finance, Adviser to the Eagle Investment Group
Dr. Thomas Harvey, associate professor of economics and finance, joined the Ashland University faculty in 1999. He is founder of, and adviser to, the Eagle Investment Group, a student-managed investment group, and founding director of the Institute for Contemporary Financial Studies.
His areas of expertise include corporate finance, investment theory and strategy, financial risk, portfolio construction and management, Series 7 licensure, money and banking, security analysis, international finance and business policy and strategy.
He received his doctor of business administration in management and labor relations from Cleveland State University, his master of business administration in banking and finance from Case Western University and bachelor of arts in English from Hillsdale College.
Ashland's program in Finance is distinctive because it includes the study of investment theory, which students put into practice by managing three portfolios on real-time basis; the study for NASD Series 7 examination; the study for the NASD Series 66; networking with corporate partners such as Edward Jones, AXA Equitable, New York Life, MetLife, and Smith Barney; and participating in national and regional conferences.
A key aspect of this program is the Trading Room and Ashland University is one of the smallest universities in the country to have such a trading room. Located in the Richard E. and Sandra J. Dauch College of Business and Economics, this real-life trading room environment functions as a classroom as well as a laboratory facility. Through a large screen television offering access to live coverage of CNBC and CNNfn, Bloomberg and other financial networks, and tickers and data walls, which update security prices and exchange rates continuously, students experience the challenges of an actual trading environment, real time market data and a vast amount of research data.
In response to the growth and success of Ashland University’s Eagle Investment Group, the University’s Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees granted in 2010 a third fund for the selected finance majors to manage. Students in Ashland’s Eagle Investment Group were first offered the chance to gain practical experience by managing the University’s investments in January of 2000 and have managed a portion of the University’s investment portfolio ever since. In 2008, the Board approved a second fund of $370,000 to add to the initial investment fund of $250,000, and this third fund, named Eagle Financial Fund, will provide an additional $250,000 for the Eagle Investment Group to manage.
Harvey said the fund managed by the finance students has consistently outperformed the market. The students may invest in cash equivalents, such as treasury bills, certificates of deposit and money market funds; exchange-traded funds; fixed income securities, including corporate notes and bonds, mortgage backed bonds, U.S. government securities and preferred stock; equity securities, such as common stock, convertible preferred stocks, stocks of non-U.S. companies, convertible notes and bonds, and American depository receipts of non-U.S. companies; and mutual funds.
Each spring, Harvey and the Eagle Investment Group members spend a week in New York City to acquaint the students with the financial capital of the world. They visit the New York Stock Exchange and meet with executives of the Group’s Corporate Partners. “We want our students to be able to walk down Wall Street, as well as Main Street, with anyone,” Harvey said. “The New York trip helps them to realize that.”
Graduates from this program are being placed in prominent positions with Edward Jones, ING, Farmers Insurance Group, National City, MBNA, Wells Fargo, MetLife, Putnam, Key Corp., AXA Equitable, UBS, KPMG, Cohen & Company, JM Smucker, Westfield Group, Stifel Nicolaus, and Stark Investments.
