William Paterson Winter 2010 Hands-On Finance Training Program

By Leslie Beck, CFP®, MBA
Public Relations Co-Director

Since 2007, William Paterson has hosted a “hands on” financial planning training program for students from Zhejiang University of Technology of Hangzhou, China.  The twice-yearly program, run by Dr. Haiyang Chen, WPU’s Director of their Global Financial Services Institute, also provides an opportunity for WPU College of Business students to train in China.

WPU hosts a group of 30-40 students from Zhejiang University each February and July.  The training program has three components:

  1. a one-week “crash” course in financial planning, where they learn about the profession in general, gain exposure to the software/technology involved, and practice presentations with mock clients.  All topics covered by the CFP® exam are touched on, with less emphasis on tax and estate tax issues, which are more country-specific;
  2.  one week to visit financial sites in NYC, including Wall Street, the NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges, the Federal Reserve, and Bloomberg headquarters;
  3. one week visiting other US cities of choice, such as Washington D.C.

The FPANJ has worked with the program to provide speakers on many financial planning topics.  Previous speakers have included such members as Nick Nicolette of Sterling Wealth Management, Diahann Lassus of Lassus-Wherley, Pat Gilmore of PGA Financial Group, Amanda Newton and James Ciprich of RegentAtlantic Capital, Taylor Thomas of Highland Financial Planning, and current FPANJ board members Shikha Mittra, Joe Leone, and Tom Duffy.

By hosting the Chinese students, WPU creates opportunities for its own business students to participate in global activities.  WP also hopes that the Chinese students will return to China to help build the financial planning profession.  Says professor Luke Dean “We hope these students will go back and help build the financial planning profession in China, and we also hope some of them will return to pursue a degree in financial planning in the United States.”

For more information on William Paterson’s program, contact Luke Dean at DEANL1@wpunj.edu.