FGB 500: Managerial Finance Hello, I'm Dr. James Pettijohn and I'm your professor of FGB 500 this semester, the online version of it. we'll going to be in contact a lot during this semester. But since most of that contact is going to be in cyber space, I thought maybe I needed to take some time right up front that your cyber space "prof" is a real "prof." Fro example, in the non-digital world, I'm a husband and I'm a father and I'm a grandfather, and I'm also a professor of Finance and General Business here at SMSU and I've been here for over 20 years. So Springfield and SMSU are pretty much my home. I want to take some time for you to get to know me just a little bit better, and also for you to understand a little bit more about this course. While I've been teaching here at SMS, I've taught most of our undergraduate finance classes and I've also taught the MBA core class-the course that this course we're in now FGB 500 is prerequisite for. I think that experience has given me sort of an unique opportunity to know what needs to be included in the course that you're enrolled in so that you could be prepared when you get into the advanced managerial courses and the MBA course. If you've been subject to any of the gossip that this MBA core or any other one, you know that one the courses that's most challenging is that advanced financial management course. And so our goal is here is to provide you with a basic foundation of information and material on financial management so that when you get into the core course, you're going to be able to meet that challenge a little bit better. Online courses are interesting. From my stand point, I'm not that sage on the stage in front of the big classroom, instead, I'm more your guide on the side. And whenever I think of a guide, makes me think of traveling my wife and I like to do. We've traveled to Europe several times and usually before we leave, I go out to Barnes and Noble to buy a travel book or two. But you know the success of that trip doesn't all depends on that travel book, it depends on us-what we do with the experience, and what we do with the travel book. If we don't spend sometime in advance studying where we're going, if we don't spend time taking advantage of recommendations in that book, our trips will be a bus. It's going to be the same way with this. I can provide a pretty good learning structure for you-one that I know will prepare you for the next course that you'll meet in financial management, but if you don't take advantage of it, there can be lots of problems. So what you need to learn to do in this course is stay disciplined, be self-motivated, follow the guidebook that I provide and you'll be pretty well prepared when you take the next course. On the other hand, if you're not disciplined, you can have a bad experience in the MBA core. Back to the travel metaphor mentioned just for a minute again, you can put your chairs and tray tables in the upright position, because we're getting ready to take a trip and I hope you like our trip through the world of managerial finance. |