Hoosier Banker 11 concentration aimed at finance majors only, but is expanding to add a banking minor this fall that will be open to other majors. Joining Purdue University Northwest, Ball State University also plans to offer a banking minor this fall. Peymon Torabi, controller at Peoples Bank, Munster, taught the Financial Reporting class last spring at Purdue University Northwest. “So far the reaction has been tremendous,” he said. “It helps to have programs like this to help people understand where community banks, and banking in general, fit in [to the community] and how much economic production is spurred by banking.” Wells has been encouraged by how student interest in the program has exceeded expectation despite almost no initial marketing for the program. “We were very conservative with our projections as to how many students would be taking these new classes that we were offering,” he said. “In fact, in the fall we anticipated we would have three students taking the Intro to Bank Management class, and we ended up having nine. The second course in the sequence, which was just offered for the first time this spring, we projected to have six students, and we had 22. It’s amazing we’re already starting to see this picking up steam with students that we hope will continue through the program.” According to Dr. Paolo Miranda, who serves as faculty program coordinator, the curriculum for Purdue University Northwest’s banking program was inspired by graduate schools of banking such as the Stonier Graduate School of Banking and the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin. He said, “We ask, what do they do, what’s their big design? Once we have that, we think, what of these programs can we offer as general classes?” The program also uses a similar model of instruction in that classes on bankingspecific topics are taught by bankers, and all Continued on next page. Peymon Torabi, Peoples Bank, Munster, teaches Financial Reporting to PNW students. Students learn about the Federal Reserve’s emergency rate cut while working toward a banking concentration.
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