Introducing our newest Her Campus Celebrity, Patrick Felke! Patrick is a junior economics major from Plymouth, Indiana. He is a Management Fellow, an active member of Phi Kappa Psi, and the President of the Investments Club! Patrick and his friends Charlie Roberts and Michael O’Leary founded The Investments Club this year! Patrick just recently finished his Management Fellows Internship at Slalom Consulting in Chicago. He sat down with Her Campus to tell us about his DePauw experience so far!
Her Campus: Thanks so much for meeting with us, Patrick! How was your internship?
Patrick Felke: The internship was great! I worked on two different ends of consulting—health care and emerging technology. So nothing to do with trading or investments!
HC: I’m glad you enjoyed your internship! So how did you get the idea to start Investments Club?
PF: Charlie, Michael, and I were sitting around last spring thinking about all of our friends who are at other great schools such as: IU, Northwestern, and even Dartmouth. We realized they all had one thing in common— great extracurricular activites to put on their resumes. So we thought that we should start something that would look great to employers. We got the idea of starting the Investment Club. We had another great friend who had started one out in Colorado.
HC: Extracurriculars always look great on resumes! How did you go about starting the club?
PF: The three of us came up with the idea. Orginally we spoke to Larry Stimpert, VP of Academic Affairs, about the idea. He put us in contact with the finance department. Brad Kelsheimer and Jenny Spors-Hill are our two main contacts in the finance department. Charlie, Michael, and I met them at 2 West and fortunately Brad knew of an Alumni working at Edward Jones who was looking to donate money to an organization at DePauw. Thankfully, the particular alumni donated to The Investments club!
HC: That’s great! DePauw has amazing alumni connections! What do are your plans for the rest of the semester?
PF: We’ve spilt the club into two teams that both have about $65,000 to invest! We don’t plan on investing all of that this semester but definitely trying to make our initial trades as soon as possible. We’ve set up a website where members can see how their team’s stocks are doing! They can’t make any trades from there, but it helps to see how the stocks are doing instead of just hearing about it. Also, we have a guest speaker coming in who is a Vice President at JP Morgan. We’re hoping to more guest speakers in the future.
HC: That sounds really exciting! Any plans for the club past May?
PF: Of course! Our main goal is to keep the club going for a long time! DePauw had a similar club in the early 2000’s but it didn’t really work out. We hope that younger students will take over the club when we graduate. Also we would eventually like to create a scholarship from the profits we earn! Some other schools offer college credit for a similar club so we would love to be able to do that as well.
HC: That all sounds amazing! Are you still accepting new members?
PF: Yes! We definitely are accepting new members! I think a common misconception is that you have to be an Econ major or a Management Fellow to join, but that is not the case! We aren’t limiting to anyone. Anyone is welcome to join! One of our goals is to educate and whether it’s saving for retirement or trying to make a profit understanding investing is always useful. If anyone wants to join we meet the first and third Thursday of every month in Julian 151 at 7:30pm!
HC: The club sounds great! The next meeting is March 19! Thanks so much for spending time talking to us Patrick! We’re looking forward to seeing great things from the Investments Club!