DePaul University is enhancing its finance degree programs this summer by appointing James R. Booth to its new Christopher L. Keeley Chair in Investment Management and constructing a virtual electronic trading room on the university’s Loop Campus.

A well-respected scholar, Booth joins DePaul’s College of Commerce faculty July 1 from Arizona State University, where he has taught banking and capital markets since 1980.  Booth’s research into investing, bank management, financial innovation and corporate governance has been published in top journals.  He has presented his work to the Federal Reserve Board, World Bank and Securities and Exchange Commission, and served as a visiting scholar at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., The Federal Reserve Bank and The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.

The new academic chair is funded by a $2 million donation from the Keeley Family Foundation, founded by John L. Keeley Jr., president and chief investment officer of Chicago-based Keeley Asset Management Corp. (KAMCO), and his wife, Barbara.   It is named for the Keeleys’ youngest son, Christopher, a DePaul alumnus and KAMCO officer who died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism at age 29 in 2002. 

Booth, 55, will teach MBA and undergraduate courses in investment management.  Blending the theoretical with the practical, the six-credit MBA course will challenge student teams to make real investments from a $300,000 fund donated for their use.  During the nine-month course, students will meet with prominent Chicago money managers, including John Keeley, to discuss their investment strategies and results.

“I look forward to this opportunity to teach at DePaul’s highly respected business school and work with finance professionals in Chicago, one of the world’s leading financial centers,” Booth said.  “Through the MBA course, students will enter the real world of investing, where they will do research, make decisions and face the consequences. This is more than a conceptual exposure—they’ll feel volatility of the markets.  And the investment managers involved with the course will enjoy asking them the same kind of brain teasers that they get from clients.” 

Ali Fatemi, chair of the finance department, said the hands-on course will provide students with useful experience to prepare them for positions in investment and hedge fund management.  “Access to a distinguished finance scholar like Jim and local investment managers will open doors to opportunity that students may not have otherwise.”

DePaul’s finance department also will open the doors to something new for undergraduate finance students and computational finance graduate students this fall: a virtual electronic trading room on the sixth floor of the DePaul Center.  The facility will feature state-of-the art technology and financial data services, including a live electronic stock ticker and 18 dual-monitor computer stations where students will have access to feeds from newswire services, analytical tools, trading platforms, portfolio analytics and risk management software. Data services will include Morningstar Direct, Morningstar Advisor, Bloomberg, Bara, Thompson Financial, Capital IQ and Aspen Graphics.

 
“The goal is to simulate the look and feel of a real trading room, where students can learn how to use financial data, generate trades, manage portfolios and monitor the risk of their positions,” Fatemi said. “This exposure will help them hit the ground running when they get their first finance job.  It will make them more competitive.”

For more information about admission to DePaul’s finance programs, call (312) 362-8300.