Students of the Wilfrid Laurier University business program will be excited to learn that the department has recently purchased 11 new Bloomberg terminals. The terminals allow for up-to-date financial information that is more in-depth than data available through regular Internet sources.
The new terminals are located in the School of Business and Economics and are available to all business students. Madhu Kalimipalli is one of the major contributors to this project. He is an associate professor of the business department and is thrilled to have this technology at Laurier.
“It’s the Shakespeare of finance data,” joked Kalimipalli. “It’s the bread and butter.”
The terminals are constantly updated with information about global finance. Laurier has had one terminal since 2008, a year after the software was available to the public, adding 11 last week.
PRISM, a student run training program, is partnered with the business department to fund and implement the new terminals. “PRISM is the group that actually trained the students,” said Kalimipalli.
Information and technology moves so quickly that it was vital for data to be up-to-date. “Textbooks are outdated, [and] everything becomes so outdated so quickly,” stated Kalimipalli. “That is why it is so important to have rich data.”
The Bloombergs come with a price, a rather large sum of money is required to purchase these machines.
“They are at least $25,000-30,000 a unit, so we are roughly paying $80,000 a year,” Kalimipalli affirmed. “But there was a price scheme, it was buy three, get 12 free or something.”
The business department has no intention of buying more in the near future, but each terminal has two screens, which allows for more than one student to be working at a single terminal.
With the coming of the new business building more training areas will available. As well, classes are using these terminals to enhance classroom learning.
“Teaching will be integrated,” concluded Kalimipalli.
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