First interdisciplinary minor introduced
Jeffrey Siaw ’07 can add a minor in Financial Computation and Modeling (FCAM) to his Rice transcript, though he took no additional classes to earn it.
“What I’m interested in is computational finance, but there’s not major for that. All my majors added up to computational finance, and now I have a minor in it,” said Siaw, who graduated in May with majors in computational and applied mathematics, economics and statistics.
In January, the Faculty Senate approved Rice’s first interdisciplinary minor, Financial Computation and Modeling. The minor requires courses from the statistics and economics departments, and was proposed by Kathy Ensor, professor and chair of statistics, and other professors in the two departments. Students will be permitted to use existing credits toward the minor.
“The program is designed to appeal to students from quantitative programs such as computer science, applied and foundational mathematics, physics and electrical engineering, in addition to economics, statistics, and managerial studies,” she said.
The FCAM minor includes existing courses in the fields of financial economics and computational finance. According to the proposal approved by the Faculty Senate, “Students completing the FCAM minor will understand the computational complexities of financial markets and their role in and impact on world economics.”
The minor does not involve the creation of new courses. Each course is already a requirement or elective for degrees in economics, mathematical economics, managerial studies and statistics. Nor is this grouping of classes a new development. Since 2002, Rice has offered an Undergraduate Certificate Program in computational finance through the Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems. The CoFES program was established with the support of Dexter Senft ’74 and John S. Cone ’80. Their gifts supported the creation of the advanced courses specific to computational finance.
Carrie Fossum ’07 will graduate with majors in managerial studies, mathematical economic analysis and statistics, and an FCAM minor.
“The minor will be a sign to people that I chose to accomplish something, to focus on this area,” said Fossum, who in July begins a job as an analyst at Morgan Stanley in the energy group in investment banking.
“With the minor, they don’t have to go digging through my resume to find out if I know anything about financial computation. It’ll be right there,” she said.
The courses required for the FCAM minor are ECON 211: Principles of Economics I or ECON 370: Microeconomics Theory; STAT 310: Probability and Statistics; ECON 400: Econometrics or STAT 410: Introduction of Regression and Statistical Computing; ECON 355: Financial Markets or ECON 448: Corporate Finance; STAT 421: Computational Finance II: Applied Time Series Analysis; ECON 449: Basics of Financial Engineering; and STAT 486: Computational Finance I: Market Models.
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