Amanda Chadwick

Ogemaw Heights High School

Amanda Chadwick of West Branch is currently a student in SVSU’s Finance program, and is now preparing for a career as a personal financial advisor or a stock analyst at a large financial services corporation.

“I started out as an accounting major because I really like the combination of math and business,” Amanda explained.  “I wanted to combine these areas, so I chose Finance because I’m really interested in the stock market and economics.”

“SVSU is wonderful because the class size is very small, especially in the upper-level classes, so the professors really get to know you.  The program is also very close-knit, and you get to know the other students as well.  This was very surprising and welcome to me.”

“The faculty are fantastic because all the professors have their doctorates. They all keep up on the changes in the field, and they teach you how to keep abreast of news as well.  They don’t teach information that’s out of date.  Everything is applicable.”

“Dr. Mackie is my favorite professor.  My first class with him was introductory investments, and since then I have taken four or five classes with him.  He gives each student a lot of individual attention, and he structures his classes based on the students’ interest.”

“For example, I was interested in learning more about investment strategies, so for one of the assignments I was able to do a presentation on the topic, and choose my reading material and research for the required component of the class based on this.”

“One surprising thing I learned was that investors are more likely to sell stocks that are performing well than those that are performing poorly.  There are many theories as to why this is, and I got to learn about this topic while other students in the class were focusing on the topics that interested them.”

“The most challenging topic we have covered so far is derivatives.  It takes half a semester to cover this topic because it’s one of the most difficult concepts in finance, but Professor Wetmore worked through it with us step by step with weekly case studies.  This approach made it manageable, and now I feel like I have it covered.”