Finance major finds her niche

Abby Patten ’23 is a finance major who wants to own her own business. She’s already had three courses in the new Don Cell Finance Lab, which simulates an investment trading floor with monitors and a stock ticker display that stretches around the ceiling displaying live market information.

The lab is a major feature of the renovated McLennan College Hall, a building which dates back to 1857—exactly 100 years before the debut of the S&P 500 stock index.

“In our Investments course we used the stock display quite a bit. Every morning we started out talking about where the market was that day, especially the S&P 500, and stocks like Tesla or Apple,” Patten says. “Even during class I noticed myself and my classmates looking up there and seeing what’s going on.”

Faculty use the ticker information in many ways, such as demonstrating a trend or explaining the impact of current news on asset values. It underscores the importance of keeping abreast of the market, a habit essential in finance careers. 

Patten enjoys the lab so much that she and her classmates gravitate there during breaks and downtime when they’re in the building, she says. When she isn’t studying in Cole Library, she likes to study in the lab, named for the late Professor Emeritus of Economics and Business Don Cell and funded by Dick Chambers ’65. He and other donors invested a total of $3.6 million in McLennan College Hall, with a generous lead gift from Bob McLennan ’65 and Becky Martin McLennan ’64.

Patten captains the Cornell cheer team, serves on the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and participates in Lunch Buddies with third graders at Mount Vernon’s elementary school—where she once was a third grader with her own Cornell Lunch Buddy. She holds two part-time jobs and coaches cheer at Mount Vernon High School. 

Cornell recently established a partnership with Iowa State University’s graduate finance program, and Patten says she may pursue that program when she graduates after only three years.

”I don’t want to leave Iowa,” she says. “I love being here.”