A Message From The Department Of Accounting, Finance, & Economics

Limestone has partnered with United Way of the Piedmont under the direction of Dr. Angela Williams to offer FREE income tax preparation services to the Cherokee County community for the past several years.  Limestone business students have volunteered through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Program, which started 50 years ago with IRS-certified volunteers who provided free assistance and preparation of tax returns for low- and moderate-income taxpayers.  The VITA program grew to hundreds of sites and thousands of volunteers throughout the United States. 

Limestone first joined the list of volunteer sites in 2014.  Limestone students enrolled in the Limestone AC332 Income Tax course were the first volunteers for the site on Limestone’ campus. The United Way Piedmont sent IRS- trained staff members to Limestone’s Montgomery Hall to provide the training, testing and kick-off of the local program.  This training, along with coursework in their income tax course, gave students the background and confidence to provide onsite tax preparation services.  As designed by the VITA program, each tax return is reviewed by a trained reviewer and then collated and presented to the taxpayer for review and signature.  The last step is to e-file the tax return directly to the IRS and state. The taxpayer leaves the session with a completed paper copy of his/her return and the satisfaction of a completed and filed return.

 Limestone made this possible with the donated use of classroom space, tax return printing services and related office supplies. The United Way’s scheduling system was used to monitor and accommodate tax preparation appointments with the local community and qualifying Limestone employees and students.  Students have shared, that while it has been a wonderful and meaningful experience, it has also been a humbling one to see and hear the gratitude from the wider community who were served.  Community members were excited to interact with exuberant, friendly, and skilled students.   Comments from community members included, “This is a great service; the students were wonderful; I will be back next year!”

Dr. Williams noted that, “I look forward to continuing this work with our students and the community and welcome questions about the program.”  She can be contacted at awilliams@limestone.edu or 864-488-4535.

Limestone’s finance majors have experienced substantial enhancements to their education with the opening of the Vera Jones Mitchell Finance Lab in 2018.  Only approximately 6% of ACBSP-accredited business schools have a finance lab and a student managed investment fund. The Lab boasts a sixteen-foot long LED stock Ticker wrapping around the top of its glass walls.

Inside the Lab, one wall houses world clocks signaling the times at the locations of the world’s major stock exchanges. Another wall contains a Rise Vision market board. The interactive, LED display board scrolls the latest financial news while presenting dynamic content such as up-to-date security prices and index values. The lab itself is equipped with 15 student desks that house retractable computers.

Finance students taking Investments, Intermediate Finance, and International Finance utilize the lab’s computers for a multitude of class assignments. Students gain real life exposure to the field of finance via a variety of experiential learning projects including researching case studies, performing excel and statistical analyses, and trading securities in a trade simulation.   

The most exciting addition to the finance program is the opportunity for students to gain trade experience through our student managed investment fund. Coinciding with the commencement of our Investment Fund Management course in Fall 2019, donations raised during the previous two years were placed into the Cline Technology & Scholarship Fund for stock purchases to be made based on our students’ vetted recommendations.

In the Investment Fund Management course students are tasked with performing security analysis on a stock of their choice. The semester culminates with students presenting their buy or sell recommendations at the Limestone Student Research Symposium, as well as to the Cline Fund Advisory Board. With the board’s approval, all buy recommended stocks are purchased through the school’s broker. The chart below shows the stocks purchased last year as well as their returns.

Portfolio Management is a new course created for the 2021-22 academic year, and it will focus student learning on maintaining the fund’s risk-level, security selection, and overall return. This course is designed to be taken up to three times so that students will be able to take on leadership roles within the student managed investment fund.  There is the opportunity to support the Cline investment Fund through using the donation link in this newsletter.  For more information about the Finance program or Cline Technology & Scholarship Fund contact Dr. Janet Bartholow – jbartholow@limestone.edu or 864-488-8319.