If you’ve ever ventured into Reynolds Hall, you’ve seen the stock ticker on the third floor. It's visible from two main entrances, as well as the Lewis Atrium below.

Look through the plate glass window below the stock ticker, and you might see Finance major Alexandria Spiker hard at work on one of the Roll Capital Markets Center's Bloomberg terminals.

“We start the day by looking at what’s going on in the news,” Spiker said. “I look at our portfolio when the market opens, and if I see that a stock is down, I’ll take a look at it. Sometimes I’ll run screeners to filter by P/E, growth, insider trading. Other than that, doing valuations, running discounted cash flows to see fair value versus market value...”

Even if you don’t speak finance, you can tell Spiker knows her stuff. That’s thanks to an alumni-driven initiative to help Chambers College students immerse themselves in the financial industry well before they ever submit a resume.

Like any good investment, it has great returns – and those returns are driving even greater investments from WVU alumni.

Building Blocks

It’s impossible to explain the Roll Center without also explaining the Student Managed Investment Fund, and vice-versa. They go hand-in-hand, working symbiotically to create student opportunities.

It may be easiest to let Brant Hammer, Fred T. Tattersall Excellence in Financial Industry Chair and SMIF faculty advisor, tell the story of how they came to be. That story begins in 2017.

“It came out of the finance department making a presentation to the Visiting Committee, and Penni Roll was on that committee,” Hammer said. “She obviously has a very high-level position in the finance world at Ares. One of the questions she asked in that meeting was, ‘What can we do to compete with other institutions that are teaching these things at a higher level?’

“We said, ‘What we really need is an experiential learning program, so that when these students step into the real world, they'll hit the ground running. We also need Bloomberg terminals, and we need a space for them.”

The Student Managed Investment Fund was created shortly after. SMIF is exactly what it sounds like: a stock portfolio managed entirely by Chambers College students.

It began with $250,000 in real currency, provided by WVU donors to allow for experiential learning in the truest sense. The current value of the SMIF portfolio is now over $650,000.

“As someone who spent more than 50 years in the investment world, I’m proud of the progress of SMIF,” said longtime SMIF supporter Fred Tattersall following a SMIF donation in October 2024. “The proof of its success is the high percentage of our students who find jobs upon graduation.”

On the other hand, the Roll Center, named for Penni Roll and her husband Rob, is a physical space in Reynolds Hall, and the home of the impressive-looking stock ticker.

It’s also home to 14 Bloomberg Terminals: specialized computer systems providing up-to-the-second stock information and financial tools.

“If you want to have a Bloomberg Terminal in your house, it's going to cost you around $24,000,” Spiker said. “Those things are extremely, extremely expensive, and just having those at our fingertips – you won't find that in most other schools.”

“The cool thing about the Roll Capital Markets Center is that it’s modeled physically off of what an actual trading floor at a modern bank would look like,” Hammer said. “If you go onto the trading floor of Ares or Goldman or Morgan Stanley, it’ll look exactly the same –though maybe a little bigger. Anybody working in there is getting comfortable working in that environment. When they step into a trading seat on the first day of work, they already know what to do.”

The space is going to good use. Student demand for the resources SMIF and the Roll Center provide has grown significantly since 2017.

“The generous support WVU students have received from our alumni and the finance and banking community has been instrumental in building SMIF and the Roll Capital Markets Center,” Roll said. “We are incredibly excited about the doors that this program has opened for our students and the exponential impact that it has had on their careers.”

Sums and Differences

So what’s the experience of this experiential learning?

“The student job title is equity analyst,” Hammer said. “They get put into a team with one or two other students and get put in charge of a specific section of the portfolio. 

"Once you get assigned to a group, your job is effectively to become an expert on that particular sector of the economy. What do these companies care about? Why do investors care about these companies? They’re following the news, constantly updating their financial models that they build for these companies. We're consistently trying to learn more so that we continue to make better decisions.”

Making those decisions – with thousands of dollars at play – is what turns SMIF students into market masters.

“I’m on the consumer discretionary team,” Spiker said. “'Consumer discretionary’ is everyday products that you don't necessarily need, but you want. The staples would be Clorox, Kleenex, toothpaste."

For Spiker, SMIF success means she has to keep her hands on the wheel. "Our sector is very volatile. It's constantly moving, to the point where it could be up 10% one day and down 11% the next day. You have to keep track of where those companies are going and hold strong when you see that it's decreasing.”

In the summer of 2025, Spiker interned at the Bank of New York Mellon in New York City, where she helped evaluate bond positions. There, she saw a familiar face: Aaron Winderbaum, BNY Mellon’s vice president of trading and portfolio management.

Winderbaum is also a SMIF veteran, and as a first-generation college graduate, he can attest to the program’s power to change students’ lives.

“By the time I was a senior, I had no internship experience,” Winderbaum said. “I was a good student with a good GPA, but as a college student, especially first-generation, you're learning all these things on your own.”

One day, Winderbaum happened to pass by a sign-up sheet for SMIF. On a whim, he decided to put his name down.

“I didn't know how amazing of an opportunity that would become. Professionally, I learned what actually interested me, and because of that, I was able to develop a passion.”

Now, as the head of the SMIF Alumni Network, Winderbaum is helping current Chambers students find their place on Wall Street. He’s known for networking with them on their trips to New York City and giving them professional advice.

“When I was a student, they had one very small room with Bloomberg Terminals," Winderbaum said. "Now, it's evolved amazingly, and I think that we’ve seen what SMIF can be and what a great investment return it’s been for the students. SMIF will only continue to grow if alumni continue to be part of their lives.”

Appreciating Values

There's more good news for SMIF shareholders: WVU’s connections to the Finance world are growing even stronger.

To prepare more WVU students for professional life, the Finance department has established a series of three investment courses available to non-Finance majors, which culminates in an opportunity to manage the Mountaineer Investment Fund, a separate portfolio established by donors. It’s driven by the same ethos as SMIF: helping WVU students understand the investment world.

Additionally, a new student organization called Mountaineers on Wall Street – co-founded by Spiker herself – helps WVU students make connections in the heart of New York City's Financial District.

“It targets freshmen and sophomores to get them on the route of investment banking, private equity, consulting – all the fields you have to start early and have an internship for every single year that you're in college to be competitive for,” Spiker said. “We want to show Wall Street that they need Mountaineers.”

Wall Street is taking notice, and so is the broader finance world. In recent years, SMIF students have been recruited by employers like BNY Mellon, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Ares Management, Boston Consulting Group, EY, Bloomberg, Stifel and Jeffries.

"We're thrilled that SMIF and the Roll Center have enabled students to begin their finance careers with some of the most influential organizations in this industry,” said Finance Department Chair Ann Marie Hibbert. 

“Thanks to the generosity of our donors, Chambers students are well-equipped to make an immediate impact with their employers and shape the future of finance."