FINANCE & REAL ESTATE
INNOVATIVE AND BUSINESS-DRIVEN
Finance & Real Estate at VSB is a community of exceptional thought leaders with a reputation for high-quality research, curricular innovation, and nationally-recognized technological resources. Our faculty collaborate with academic colleagues, students, alumni, and corporate partners within VSB and across campus to ensure a dynamic and business-relevant learning environment. In particular, our Real Estate faculty work closely with the Daniel M. DiLella Center for Real Estate to develop exceptional academic and professional development opportunities for students pursuing a degree in real estate.
Business-Driven Curriculum
Our Finance & Real Estate faculty recognizes the rapidly changing pace of these fields and ensures that the curriculum reflects what’s driving the business. We frequently turn to corporate partners to receive direct feedback on the efficacy of the curricula and real-time suggestions for improvement. These conversations ensure our finance and real estate courses remain relevant, especially as these fields evolve and overlap with other disciplines such as engineering, computer science, and other sciences.
In particular, we focus on the growing importance of technology in the capital markets. Finance students regularly attend classes in the Victoria and Justin Gmelich ’90 Lab for Financial Markets, a state-of-the-art facility where students get direct exposure to the intersection of finance and technology as it relates to market data and coding. For real estate students, the Gmelich Lab provides access to a powerful geographic information system to conduct mapping, data and spatial analysis, and more.
World-Class Degree Programs
The Finance & Real Estate Department at VSB oversees three degree programs: a BBA with a major or minor in Finance; a major, co-major or minor in Real Estate, and a Master of Science in Finance. Additionally, undergraduate finance majors may pursue the Applied Quantitative Finance Concentration for additional coursework that prepares them to be more conversant on the modeling and complex analysis happening in finance today. Students in the Villanova MBA Program can also pursue concentrations in either finance or real estate.
Applied Quantitative Finance Concentration
Quantitative Finance is an area where STEM meets finance and is a field that is heavily reliant on models and complex analysis. Students interested in this concentration should be quantitatively inclined as the curriculum will be challenging and incorporate higher-level courses in Math, Statistics, Analytics and Computer Science. When woven in with a major in Finance, a student will exit the program prepared to become not only a “quant”, but a quant who is well rounded and well versed in all areas of finance. After consulting with industry experts, the AQF curriculum was curated and enhanced to best serve the student and to meet not only the current needs of employers, but future needs as well. Unlike other majors and minors within VSB, this rigorous concentration will require specific admission following a students first year at Villanova and will require careful planning with an advisor to make sure the program can be completed in a normal course.
Scholarship
VSB Finance faculty publish in journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Review of Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, as well as other leading journals.