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Student organization snapshot: FMA

Want to meet people—students and successful professionals—who share your interests and can help you get ahead? Need to add some great experience to your resume? Have a desire to perfect skills like leadership and team building?

Student organizations in the College of Business Administration give you all this and more. You can do a little, such as attend meetings, or a lot, such as become a committee chair or officer. It’s your call.

In each issue of BizBuzz, we showcase a student organization so you can see which one is right for you.

Financial Management Association and Financial Honor Society help students connect with each other and professionals in the field.


Andres Catano

“Our motto is to prepare students for a career in finance and to become more well-rounded,” said Andres Catano, current president of the Financial Management Association (FMA). “We want students to realize that, as finance majors, they have many career options beyond being analysts or working in a bank.”

Catano and the FMA’s executive board have worked hard to organize events that enable members to see the many opportunities available to them.

FMA offers events from the local to the national.

If you like the idea of frequent and predictable meetings, consider this:

“We used to have meetings every other week, but we wanted to accommodate more employers who want to speak to our members; we wanted to offer more benefits, and we wanted people to remember the schedule more easily, so we now have weekly meetings,” Catano said.


Adam Starling

If you like to socialize, FMA delivers, too.

“We also have planned some social nights, and we’re working on an executive dinner,” he said. “It will be a very exclusive event that will give our top ten members the chance to spend time with an employer. We’ll be basing our selection on criteria such as who is most active, has the best GPA, and is involved in community service projects.”

Also, recognizing the synergy between finance and accounting, the executive board is getting together with Florida International University’s Accounting Association (FIU-AA) for a networking event.

“This event will be similar to the executive dinner, though more informal,” Catano said. “About 35 members from each organization will be able to attend a sit-down dinner with seven or eight employers from finance companies and accounting firms.”


Adam Starling

Interested in entrepreneurship, testing your skills, or preparing for job searches? Once again, FMA has what you need.

The organization has begun to plan an entrepreneurship night, contacting entrepreneurs in South Florida to participate.

Another ongoing activity that’s sharpened members’  skills is a semester-long investment competition that helps students put their classroom knowledge to practical use.

FMA also offers career-advancing workshops, such as mock interviews and résume critiques. And, because they are part of FMA International, members receive benefits, including subscriptions to leading journals and the option to participate in the FMA Finance Leaders’ Conference, taking place this year in Chicago with tours of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on the schedule.

Want to improve your resume and enlarge your circle of contacts? FMA can help.


From left to right: Andres Catano, FMA president; Cristian Bossa, FMA vice president; and Adam Starling, president, FHA, at BizFest

“I wanted to get involved with the college, and I know that to be successful you need to be active, to meet people, and to be in a leadership role,” said Catano, who had a Florida Bright Futures Scholarship that would cover 75 percent of his tuition anywhere in South Florida for as long as he attended college, and who opted for the university because of the reputation of the business school. “I know that the main purpose of college is education, but to get a job, you also need to network.”

“People can attend meetings to get a few pointers on investments and jobs, or they can lead a committee—which takes a couple hours a week and looks good on their resumes—or they can run for office and invest even more time,” he said.

Financial Honor Society offers additional recognition.

“All the meetings of the Financial Honor Society (FHS) are collaborative with FMA, but we do offer our members—who need a 3.25 GPA or higher and six completed credit hours in finance—the opportunity to be listed with honors students in the commencement book,” said Adam Starling, current FHS president.


FMA and FHS e-board at meeting that included presentation by Ameriprise Financial

For Starling—who started college with the plan of becoming a physical therapist but liked his math and preliminary business courses so much that he made the change to finance—the biggest advantages of FMA and FHS are the exposure to the industry.

“From my classes, I knew I wanted to major in finance and go into this field,” he said. “Now, I hear presentations from employers one on one, which has helped me to see what I want to get into as a career. I also get to network with fellow students, which has been very important for me, with one connection in FMA leading me to an internship.”

Starling is excited about the organization’s efforts to set up alumni networking, enabling members to stay in touch five years down the road and about its focus on community service.


FMA and FHS e-board with Bank of America professionals who presented about careers in banking

“Community service projects—such as Relay for Life, a canned food drive, and serving dinner at Community Partnership for the Homeless, Inc. (CPHI) the day after Thanksgiving, are good for the community and for us as individuals, plus employers love to see these activities on our résumés,” he said.

Plaques and stars honor the organizations.

Both organizations received bronze awards from FMA International for 2005-2006 in recognition of their successes in membership recruitment and development. Only a small percentage of the 200 student chapters earn the awards; plaques are on view in the Finance Department’s office in RB 208.

Also, when the new business building complex opens, two stars will shine from the Wall of Stars, reminding future students of the organizations.

The star for FMA was funded by its advisor, Constantine “Gus” Kalogeras, clinical professor of finance. He also provided half the funds for another star for FHS, whose advisor is William W. Welch, chair, Department of Finance. Emmanuel N. Roussakis, director, Master of Science in Finance (MSF) and graduate certificate programs in banking, was the advisor to both organizations from their inception in the 1980-81 academic year until 2003.

“Throughout its 26-year history, past presidents and officers worked hard to deliver members the same benefits described by Catano and Starling to ensure FMA’s visibility on campus and its living up to the highest club standards,” Roussakis said.

Take the next step.

If you’d like to get involved with FMA and FHS, check the student events calendar or the web site (http://www.fiufma.com) for meeting information and then make plans to attend. The fee to join FMA is $70, with an additional $5 for FHS membership.

FMA and FHS at a glance

Member profile

Benefits

Activities

Cost

Web site:
http://www.fiufma.com

Contact information: