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Student-Led Investing Pays Off
The PRISM student group has successfully managed a portion of the University’s endowment from $100,000 to nearly $1 million in 23 years.
The first time the idea of students managing a portion of The University of Scranton’s endowment came up, it was rejected.
Back in 1997, Kania School of Management administrators thought it could be a positive experiential learning opportunity for the students and tasked finance professor Riaz Hussain, Ph.D., with assembling a group of interested students to make the request to the Board of Trustees.
The Board turned the students down, understandably hesitant to risk any portion of the endowment. But the students were undaunted, Hussain remembers.
“They made a strong pitch the following year and received $100,000 to start a student-managed investment portfolio. The first investment was made in 1999,” said Hussain, who advised the students from that first investment until his retirement from Scranton in 2018. Outperforming
PRISM, which stands for Portfolio of Responsible Investments under Student Management, was born. The goal was to provide students with real-world money management experience, and the same holds true today, more than 20 years later.
“Managing a portion of the University’s financial assets affords students the opportunity to apply knowledge gained in the classroom and understand how various strategies translate to actual performance,” said Edward J. Steinmetz, Jr., CPA, Scranton’s senior vice president for Finance and Administration.
And while students reap the benefits of this type of handson learning, the fund itself also has benefited. That initial $100,000, strategically invested and later buoyed by an additional $100,000 from the endowment, has grown to nearly $1 million over the past 23 years.
PRISM students, from left: Madalyne Buhler, Darryl Butler, Anthony DiRienzo, Genna Dominguez, James Murray, Robbie Katz, Aidan Guarnuccio, James Peracchio, Matt Kronenburg, Chris Caragliano, Jimmy Coleman, student leader Tom Csehovics, Aiden Messett, student leader Hanna Guarnuccio, Luke Glidewell, Madelyn Ronan and student leader Austin Glidewell.
Joe Witkowski ’01 was one of the inaugural members of PRISM and now works at investment management company BlackRock as the director of Product Design and Innovation for Exchange Traded Funds, Mutual Funds and Alternative Products in the company’s Latin American division.
Witkowski, who was a finance major and computer information systems minor, puts PRISM’s milestone in perspective this way: “If back in the year 2000 you invested $100,000 in your 401k and reinvested all your dividends, you would have a little over $400,000 today. It’s a big accomplishment for the PRISM team to have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last 20-plus years.”
He points out that it was a collective effort of hundreds of student portfolio managers and faculty advisors over the years.
“It is also a moment to acknowledge the trustees of the University’s endowment and their long-held belief in the quality of the Scranton education and PRISM, a belief that is well-placed,” he said.
From left: Tom Csehovics and Hanna Guarnuccio, PRISM student leaders, and John Ruddy, Ph.D. ’91, PRISM moderator.
PRISM was one of the only groups of its kind when it started in the late ’90s, Hussain recalled. Now it is more common for colleges and universities to allocate portions of their endowments for student management, with 300 such funds across the country, according to The Center for Investment Research.
Investing for Good
“The students were excited to have an unusual opportunity to manage money in an ethical and professional manner. They took their fiduciary responsibility seriously,” Hussain said. “They were required to make safe, conservative investments with long-term goals. Therefore, very few stocks made spectacular advances or failed miserably.”
Sarah Dalfol ’01, G’02, who is now an accountant at public accounting firm Murphy, Miller and Baglieri in New Jersey, was part of the early days of PRISM alongside Witkowski.
“It was a bit nerve-wracking, working with actual money. It was a huge responsibility,” she recalled. “We had to be smart about it and make sure we were making very good choices. We were using what we had learned in class with
‘pretend’ money and making conscious decisions and putting everything we learned into actual, real-life experience.”
Dalfol, who was part of PRISM during her senior year and MBA year at Scranton, pitched a health care stock to the group, which it invested in. After graduation, she went on and invested some of her own money in that same company and still owns those shares today — the ultimate endorsement of the PRISM experience and its real-world relevancy.
The students in PRISM meet weekly to review their current investments and present potential new investments to the group, which then votes on any new shares they might buy. Each presentation requires thorough research into the accounting and financial data of any company they might invest in, as well as its management style and competitors.
Each investment decision also has an ethical dimension, points out John Ruddy, Ph.D. ’91, an associate professor in the Economics and Finance Department, who took over as PRISM moderator after Hussain’s retirement. Glidewell, a senior finance and economics major who is one of PRISM’s current student leaders. “The PRISM alumni network is strong, and being able to rely on that network is a huge benefit to students and alumni of the club.”
Fellow senior Hanna Guarnuccio helps organize that alumni speaker series and is grateful for both the mentorship of alumni and the relationships among students in the group. An accounting and economics double major with a minor in business leadership in the Business Leadership Honors Program, she joined PRISM as a first-year student and is now a co-leader alongside Glidewell and junior Tom Csehovics. Guarnuccio’s first successful stock pitch in PRISM was the athletic wear company Lululemon. She was a sophomore at the time.
“The majority of students in PRISM are in finance, econ, accounting, but we do have other majors, including marketing and international studies. It helps to have the varied perspectives of different majors,” she said. “It’s a great way to
— Austin Glidewell ‘22, PRISM student co-leader
“As a Jesuit and Catholic university, we have to invest in companies and products that are consistent with our values. Alcohol, tobacco, gambling, those are stocks that we should refrain from investing in as they are inconsistent with the mission of our University,” Ruddy said. It’s why he listened to but ultimately turned down the student proposal to invest in gambling company Draft Kings, because PRISM investments are not solely focused on profit potential.
The Network
PRISM not only gives students the opportunity to manage a portion of the University’s $218.1 million endowment but also offers networking opportunities and an alumni speaker series.
“One of the great things about our club is how involved alumni still are. Each year we invite alumni back to speak about their real-world experience and offer insights on their current jobs, financial markets and careers,” said Austin get more hands-on experience with what you’re learning in the classroom. For me, I’m not a finance major, so getting to hear more of the technical markets talk at PRISM that I don’t necessarily get in the classroom is really helpful for me.”
Guarnuccio will start a job at UBS in its investment banking division after graduation and join the ranks of other successful PRISM alumni, who work at the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and EY, among others. Glidewell will join SMBC Nikko in its Sales and Trading Division this summer, and Csehovics will intern with Metlife Investment Management.
“PRISM is such a strong tradition within the business school. You talk to alumni now, and their involvement in PRISM always comes up,” Guarnuccio said. “For everybody who has been involved, it is such a meaningful part of their Scranton experience, and it shows what can happen when students work together.”
