Financial research for University of Illinois Springfield graduate assistant Michael Ese used to include seeing what experts posted on YouTube.
Now Ese, who is earning his Master of Business Administration with a focus in marketing, uses real-time data to conduct market research thanks to a new trading lab at UIS that features Bloomberg Terminals. The terminals, which are part of the new Sean and Taryn Grant/Landmark Auto Trading Lab at UIS, deliver real-time market data, analytics, news and trading tools to financial professionals.
The Trading Lab will help students pursuing degrees in fields such as finance and data analytics apply what they learn in class, using the same tools as financial professionals.
“These are the exact same terminals that are used on Wall Street by brokers to trade,” saidSomnath Bhattacharya, dean of the College of Business and Management at UIS. “The same facility that one would have on Wall Street in New York is available here in central Illinois in the College of Business and Management here at UIS. That’s a huge resource.”
The Bloomberg Terminal has helped Ese learn to trade with confidence. He took the self-paced, interactive e-learning course “Bloomberg Finance Fundamentals” to learn the value of the system.
“This has helped me to have a better understanding of the market,” Ese said.
The Trading Lab opened in February 2026 with the help of a $150,000 gift from Sean Grant, CEO and owner of Landmark Automotive Group, and Taryn Grant, executive director of The Grant Conservatory. The lab is a resource Bhattacharya wants to share with the community.
“Right now, it’s for students, faculty, staff members, and we are hoping that we can convince some community interest, too, because I think there are people, bankers … and traders, who might be interested,” Bhattacharya said. “I keep telling people that this is not the College of Business and Management’s resource. It’s not a UIS resource. It is really Springfield’s and central Illinois.’”
Serkan Karadas, associate professor of finance at UIS, is leading community involvement for the lab, bringing in high school students for financial literacy/finance workshops. During the spring semester, the College of Business and Management welcomed students from Routt Catholic High School in Jacksonville, the Christian County CEO (Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities) program and Calvary Academy in Springfield to the lab.
“Train young minds,” Karadas said. “Financial literacy is a very important topic and also a necessary topic.”
Theoretical knowledge, practical application
The trading lab has 10 terminals with 20 stations (two screens share one terminal).
“The idea is for our professors to be able to deliver Socratic lectures and then tell the students, ‘Now fire up the terminals and begin to implement what you have just learned,’” Bhattacharya said. “That makes a huge difference because it helps cement the theoretical knowledge immediately into practical application.”
In a demonstration of what a Bloomberg Terminal can accomplish, Karadas pulled up the latest trading information regarding technology company Apple Inc.
“Let’s say I want to know what analysts think of Apple – 58.9% of them say ‘buy,’ 30.4% of them say ‘hold,’ and the rest (10.7%) say ‘sell,’” Karadas said. “This is not necessarily the truth, but it’s a pretty educated opinion from the financial experts.”
Seconds later, Karadas pulled up information on Amazon.com Inc. It showed that 95.1% of analysts had a buy rating, 4.9% said hold, and zero said sell.
“Let’s say you’re a student helping us run our Student Managed Investment Fund, so they should take a look at this to see what the research is saying,” Karadas said. The available data allows students to “beef up” their research, Karadas said.
“They cannot just say, ‘Well, I read on the internet; my dad told me it’s a good company.’ They have to read the report,” Karadas said. “This high-quality research is not available for free on Google.”
Meeting the challenge
Evan Decloquement, UIS exchange student from France, is using a Bloomberg Terminal to research which equities to invest in for his team members participating in the Bloomberg 2026 Global Trading Challenge, a university investment competition that takes place within the Bloomberg Terminal.
“We have $1 million portfolio of global equities, and we have to buy, sell. It’s not real money,” said Decloquement, who has earned a Bloomberg Market Concepts certificate. “I’m trying to find, for my team, the best.”
Ese, who is from Nigeria, said the Bloomberg Terminal helped himhave a better understanding of the market. He’s used the terminal to help him decide if he wants to buy, hold or sell stock.
“The business I chose – in my head I was like, ‘This is a good business to take,’” Ese said. But after he looked at the numbers from his Bloomberg Terminal research, he changed his mind. “I had to assign what I found, which was to hold off instead of just buying based on my personal preference.
“One thing about trading and being an analyst is that nobody’s 100% correct. There’s no 100% that the choices I’m making are wrong or right, but the fundamental is that I have the right reasoning – the reasoning behind what I’m talking about is valid.”
High schools wanting more information about the Sean and Taryn Grant/Landmark Auto Trading Lab at UIS can contact Serkan Karadas, associate professor of finance, at skara6@uis.edu. For more information about sponsoring a Bloomberg Terminal in the lab, individuals can contact Somnath Bhattacharya, dean of the UIS College of Business and Management, at sbhat23@uis.edu.
Each terminal costs $25,000 per year to maintain.
“It is a virtuous ecosystem,” Bhattacharya said. “As the community supports us, we’re able to do more for them.”
Tamara “Tammie” Browning is a freelance writer and reporter from Petersburg, Ill. She has a weekly newsletter “Mother Road Moves” on Substack (motherroadmoves.substack.com) that chronicles the people, places, things and happenings on Route 66 – from Illinois to California.
This article appears in November SBJ 2026.