The Tippie College of Business recently announced it will open a new finance lab for students pursuing an undergraduate finance major or master’s of finance.

The funding for the project stems from a gift from Philip and Nicole Hadley of Riverside, Connecticut. Philip Hadley was a University of Iowa accounting grad in 1984.

“The space will be named in his honor,” said Gregory Lamb, the executive director of development for the UI Center for Advancement. “Phil has been a donor for a number of years. We initially started the conversation with him last November explaining the project. This led to a conversation about supporting the project.”

Lamb said there is an existing finance lab in the Pappajohn Business Building, but an expansion would provide more resources for students.

“The space is inadequate,” he said. “What we have going forward will provide for much better technology.”

Construction of the new lab will begin in the summer, Finance Department Executive Director Thomas Rietz said, and the second phase will occur the following summer.

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“We will actually open and not be completely done for the fall semester,” Rietz said. “There will be structural improvements to the space over the course of the next semester. It will be effectively and entirely complete by fall of 2020.”

Although the lab will not be entirely complete in fall 2019, Rietz said, the lab will be open and available for finance students to use. The space will be regulated — only finance students with key cards can use the space.

The lab will consist of seven new Bloomberg machines and other new financial-data services. Bloomberg machines are financial-data services that monitor financial markets. There will also be additional seating in the reconfigurable space.

Finance Associate Professor Amrita Nain said the new lab would offer more collaboration opportunities among finance students.

“They’ll have a space to work in cooperative setting,” Nain said. “Students will speak to each other and getting ideas on the projects they are working on.”

Nain said the lab would be beneficial toward experiential learning and the many projects finance students encounter. She also said that, recently, the Business College implemented an undergraduate-to-graduate option for students wanting to immediately pursue a master’s in finance. The space will offer collaboration for students with that program to speak with finance master’s students, Nain said.

Third-year finance student Riley Callahan said she was excited to hear the news about the new lab, and she thinks the space will be beneficial.

“As finance students, we have specific needs in terms of being able to keep up with market data and specific analysis data, things that not everyone is super aware of,” she said. “Having these specific resources for finance students will be a huge game-changer.”