By Deana Elhit, Features Editor
Who wants to be a millionaire?
If you are 21 now and you put yourself on a strict budget, you could be worth $1 million by the time you’re 40, says Michael Wade, who teaches BUS-116, Stock Investing. The course focuses on financial long-term goals that teach you how to go from spending money to investing for an early retirement.
Each assignment in the course is geared towards helping you become a millionaire, and discussions are focused on the mechanics of buying stocks.
“My goal is to help people acquire wealth,” Wade said. “I try to share the road towards retirement with any student, whether they be 18 years old or 40 years old.”
Wade, who has been working at Moraine Valley since 1987, began investing in 2000. By the time he retires, he expects to accumulate $2 million, which he plans to use for traveling.
Investing in stocks is a great way to slowly work your way up to become a millionaire, he said. For example, if you have saved approximately $9, you can buy a share in Ford. Or for $16-17, you can buy into a regional bank.
To save money to put toward investing, Wade suggests simple swaps such as buying things second hand or making your coffee at home. Instead of buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks for $5, for instance, invest in buying the company.
“Don’t just drink it, own it,” he said.
Wade believes this course is crucial for college students in understanding the importance of money and thinking towards the future.
“Everyone should be investing a percentage of their savings,” he said.
Since Wade was a young man, he has always been focused more on long-term goals. “I saw I really needed to start investing more in the stock market, so I put myself on a strict budget and ways to save money into the stock market,” he said. While managing his budget, he would also balance having fun by going on vacations and trips while aware of his financial needs.
BUS-116 is an elective course for business students, as it’s part of the financial services certificate. This class is also open for general students.
The course is the standard 17-weeks. Students will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays on Webex from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
“Give up something now for a better future, and if you can work hard, save hard and at the same time have fun, it just makes life better when you’re older,” Wade said.
Get hands-on, join team of editors
Student Publications Seminar (COM-153) is a one-credit-hour, repeatable course that is designed to help students become great editors through on-the-job training while providing content for Moraine Valley’s student newspaper, The Glacier.
Last March, as soon as campus was closed due to COVID-19, students in this course scrambled to help launch the online edition of The Glacier.
“This semester, students are really helping to create the publication in a lot of ways beyond just producing the weekly content,” said Lisa Couch, who teaches the course. “We are all engaged together in figuring out the best way to put this publication together for Moraine’s audience and how to take advantage of all the multimedia opportunities we have now that we’re online.”
The course is fun, hands-on and practical, Couch said, and is tailored to each student’s interest, whether that is in producing traditional content or exploring new avenues such as podcasts, photo essays, graphic design, or social media marketing. Students may edit or produce content for one or more of The Glacier’s sections, which include news, features, arts & entertainment, sports, and opinion.
Students learn how to come up with story ideas, work with writers, write headlines, and lay out articles. They also learn news judgment, AP style, media ethics and reporting techniques, and they explore careers in journalism. There is no traditional homework in this class; all work is geared toward producing the publication.
This course is ideal for students who are looking for a career in journalism, communications, marketing, public relations, or political science.
Taking this course will create a portfolio for future employers, internships, scholarships, or applications to four-year universities. Your position in this class can also be added onto your resume, opening doors for future opportunities.
The course also teaches skills valuable in any field or major, such as being resourceful, paying attention to detail, thinking critically and learning to find information.
The Student Publications Seminar will be virtual and meet on Tuesdays from 3:30-4:30 p.m. over Zoom. Editors’ meetings, in conjunction with Glacier adviser Jan Kopischke, are held at the end of class.
Connect with your inner ‘mother’ via literature
Women in Literaure (LIT-219) discovers female writers from past and present that explore taboo topics such as sexuality, women’s voting rights, the privilege of having a voice, mother-daughter relationships, postpartum depression, sexual assault, and more.
“Female writers from the beginning of time have been willing to explore topics that no one else was willing to explore,” said Shelita Shaw, who teaches the course.
Speaking openly about such topics allows students to connect to the writing, and if they haven’t experienced certain situations, then they are able to understand, she said.
Shaw discusses how the nature of women writers talking about topics that are not usually expressed is opened by the motherly love that lies within us. We are able to comfort a person without having to go through the same experience.
“Women usually deal with topics they know and don’t know, and that comes from a sense of mothering and not having given birth–mothering whether it’s with students, nieces, nephew, people in the community and because of that, you can literally comfort a child that has been sexually assaulted even if you haven’t been,” she said.
The course explores writers like Toni Morrison, who allows her readers to explore mother-daughter relationships, and Roxane Gay, who talks about being able to write as a woman while identifying as a lesbian.
“’We also talk about very rare subjects touched in writing, things like postpartum depression or not wanting to have a child,” Shaw said. “There is a particular passage where an author starts with, ‘I have 36 babies and I didn’t keep any of them.'”
The class is full of open-minded discussions, hearing the perspective of both female and male students.
“I love those conversations we have, and I value them even virtually because they bring their experience to the class based on the author’s experience so you can be guaranteed to walk away with an open mind and open heart to other people’s experiences,” Shaw said.
The 16-week class will be virtual on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3:15 p.m.
Planning a music career? This one’s for you
If you are interested in a career field in the music industry or want to be in a fun class that can make music tick, then this class would be perfect for you.
Basic Musicianship (MUS-103) taught by Tammi Carlson, is a general education course that will help you learn to read music and learn basic skills you’ll need in any music career field.
The course is the study of music theory that helps to improve the student’s music performances and listening skills, says Carlson.
She describes the classroom as active; students are constantly off their seats writing melodies, playing the piano, clapping to rhythms, and more.
In this class, students learn major and minor scales, intervals, rhythm, triads and their inversions, dominant seventh chords, and the concept of tonality.
“Practical exercises in the development of music dictation skills as well as beginning music compositions are also included,” Carlson said.
This course is essential for the music theory sequence, required in all music-related degrees.
If you are interested in the music theory sequence course and lack music reading skills, you will need to take this class first.
By the end of the course, students should be able to “read music fluently with an understanding of commonly used music symbols, perform rudimentary analysis of music using basic elements from the common practice period, create musical compositions, and perform simple melodies and rhythms through singing and play the piano,” Carlson said.
The course will meet from 1 to 2:50 p.m. in a hybrid format for 17 weeks. On Mondays, students will be online to learn material for the week. On Wednesdays, students will meet for labs and practice skills they learned online.
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