SIFE business club (Students in Free Enterprise) have a new addition to their agenda this year called EU Wallstreet, which started on Nov. 15. The game was open to all business majors and minors. Students created a fake portfolio and they were each given a hypothetical $30,000 with which to invest. “The goal is to increase the finance literacy knowledge,” said Trevor Wampler, senior management and marketing major and president of SIFE. The top investors will receive a prize at the end of the game on April 15. Investors include Northwestern Mutual and Charles Schwab, organizations who donated money for the prizes for the game. Top prizes include $725 for the student who ranks first place. According to Wampler, the main goal of the stock game “is trying to give the business department unity.”
SIFE partners with the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children where, according to Wampler, SIFE students “teach principles of business, how to start a business and other entrepreneurship-type lessons” to middle school students in West Philadelphia. Wampler also hopes to set up an ethics roundtable for this semester that seniors could join to discuss ethics issues. One of the other projects that SIFE is working on is putting together an Anti-Piracy Video.
In April, SIFE will be competing against other colleges like they do every year. “We have a great group of people, we work really well together,” Wampler said. They will be judged based on the quality of projects, how many students are involved, the number of students that are reached by these projects and other factors.
Chair of the business department, Al Socci, has very positive things to say in reference to the group this year. “The SIFE group this year is a group of students that really work well together,” Socci said. “Because of the fundraising efforts this year and last year, SIFE group will donate in the area of $8,000 to charitable organizations this spring.” When asked how those funds will be spent, Socci said, “These funds will be spent globally, domestically and within the Eastern community.”