Dear Friends,
Welcome to the Department of Finance and Real Estate in the College of Business at Colorado State University! I am glad that you have chosen to spend some time with us wanting to learn about who we are and what we do. Briefly stated, our goal is to be recognized as one of the leading non-Ph.D. granting academic finance and real estate departments among U.S. public universities. To this end, we are committed to pursuing excellence in teaching and research, and fostering strong links with the business community.
Our Department offers high quality academic programs in the twin realms of finance and real estate. Students in the undergraduate program are exposed to a broad variety of foundational courses in finance and can choose among several advanced courses in the areas of corporate finance, investments, financial planning, and real estate. In addition, we offer a specialized master’s program in Financial Risk Management that caters to individuals who would like to apply their quantitative skills in providing risk solutions and portfolio management expertise to corporations and financial services firms.
The learning environment in the Department is designed to produce students with the knowledge base, confidence, and ethical mooring to be successful in business and be responsible stewards of the environment. We complement our rigorous academic program with an experiential learning component. Our state of the art finance lab with access to licensed databases and Bloomberg® terminals offer students a sophisticated and real-time educational experience. Students get a taste of industry work demands and learn practical aspects of financial management through internships. The student managed investment fund (Summit Fund) is yet another avenue through which students can gain hand-on skills in security analysis and portfolio management. Our curriculum also equips students with the knowledge required to succeed in professional certification examinations such as the CFA® and CFP®. No wonder our graduates are so highly valued by employers.
The engine that helps deliver our value proposition is our dedicated group of faculty and staff. Our department comprises of several diverse and high-caliber faculty who are passionate about teaching, and inspired and informed by their research. The research interests of faculty cover most major topics and methodologies in finance and real estate, including asset pricing, corporate finance, corporate governance and sustainability, derivatives, international finance, IPOs, mutual funds and real estate investments, just to name a few. Our faculty members are involved in various national professional and academic organizations, are recipients of distinguished awards and scholarships, and publish their ideas in some of the most prominent journals in the field such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Empirical Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Financial Review, Real Estate Economics, Operations Research, Journal of Public Economics, among others. In support of our high emphasis on knowledge discovery, the Department conducts an active research seminar series that allows participants to interact and learn from thought-leaders in the discipline.
The Department is proud to host the Everitt Real Estate Center which provides valuable service to the real estate community. The Center conducts several faculty-student collaborated research projects and is responsible for producing the widely acclaimed Northern Colorado residential price index.
In conclusion, to quote Tennyson, the ethos that permeates the Department’s learning environment is: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” I hope I have been able to convey a small sense of the dynamism, opportunity and excitement that exists in the Department of Finance and Real Estate. I encourage you to click on the various links on this webpage to learn more about our programs and people, and find out ways in which you can stay engaged. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing you on campus soon.
Sincerely,
Sanjay Ramchander
Chair & Professor Department of Finance & Real Estate
Charles and Gwen Lillis Faculty Fellow
Sanjay.Ramchander@colostate.edu