When Denison finance majors enter the job market, in addition to strong foundations in economics, statistics, and financial analysis, they’ll have ample experience in one of the field’s most essential platforms: Bloomberg Terminals.
Bloomberg Terminals are a major tool for those in the finance world, says Associate Professor of Economics Hyun Woong Park. “Having Bloomberg Terminal credentials on our students’ resumés signals they have the experience and prior knowledge to enter these careers.” With eight Bloomberg Terminals on campus, students can easily access the information and research they need for class projects and research. “These are tools commonly seen in business schools,” Park says. “It’s truly remarkable that a liberal arts college like Denison provides access to cutting-edge financial information through Bloomberg Terminals.”
Chirani Silva Nugegodage ’26, who is onboarding to a wealth management team with Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, agrees. During Silva Nugegodage’s internship with Goldman Sachs last summer, she learned the importance of Bloomberg Terminals in providing the kind of accurate, up-to-the-minute information investment firms need to build and manage portfolios.
Silva Nugegodage said that without Bloomberg Terminals, it’s difficult to find information and test it for accuracy. “You can find the information on other platforms, but it can be reported differently depending on their metrics. Plus, a lot of it is behind a paywall,” she said. “Using Bloomberg, you get everything you need from the most trustworthy source. That’s vital for the finance industry.”
Functioning as the gateway into the global financial ecosystem, Bloomberg’s cloud-based system offers real-time market data streaming, analysis and charting tools, finance-related news, and more.
“It’s helping me learn the basics of finance markets,” said finance major George Goins ’28. “I’m learning to understand the graphs, security descriptions, how to decipher a bond’s ratings and coupon frequencies, and more.”
Goins, a cornerstone of Denison’s national championship swim and dive team, appreciates the numbers and real-world applications he’s learning in his finance major. “Numbers have always felt natural to me, and the Bloomberg Terminals help me build a skill that’s valuable for my career, and for myself,” he said.
Finance major Kamil Batalvi ’28 has been preparing for a career in finance since his first internship with an institutional asset manager at the age of 14. His mother’s work as a credit analyst with an investment management firm, alongside a knack for economics discovered in high school, awakened an early interest in the field.
Denison offers four Bloomberg certifications, and Batalvi has already mastered three of them: Bloomberg Financial Fundamentals, Bloomberg Market Concepts, and Bloomberg Environmental Social Governance (ESG). The university began offering the Bloomberg Spreadsheet Analysis certification in 2025. No doubt Batalvi will tackle that next, but first he’s looking forward to his second summer internship with Northup Grumman.
One highlight of Batalvi’s previous internship with the technology firm was a visit to the mission control center for the rocket that resupplies the International Space Station, which provides an apt parallel to his first experience on the terminal.
“Going into finance, you know that eventually you’ll want to put your hands on that Bloomberg keyboard,” he said, “but flying a rocket seemed easier than looking at that terminal.”
The terminals typically are set up in a dual screen mode, but users can expand their views to encompass as many as six screens at a time. Multi-screen setups allow professionals to keep track of tasks such as monitoring news, executing trades, or analyzing data, without toggling back and forth.
For law-school-bound Phinn Spindler ’28, majoring in finance and minoring in philosophy, working with the terminals has been “one of the more real-world things I’ve done in my time here.”
“It’s very clear what this means in concrete terms: real security, real values, and a call to real action,” he said.
Spindler enjoys the balance between his two academic studies. “Philosophy gives me a view of the world 1,000 feet up, and finance brings me back to Earth.” He says the combination increases his communications skills — critical for careers in both law and finance.
“Dr. Park’s classes are some of the best,” he said. “He gives very clear and concise explanations, then opens it up for class discussion.”
As Silva Nugegodage launches into her career in wealth management, she’s happy she can draw on her Bloomberg experience at Denison for her work with a leading global investment management firm.
“Part of my job is to connect with clients, build trust with them, and understand their goals. Then we build a pool to invest their money based on their goals and risk tolerance,” she said. “I’ll be checking on their investment on a daily basis to assure we’re following the market, keeping their money safe, and helping it grow optimally.”
“I absolutely need this tool for my job.”
Bloomberg Terminal data sets: Not just for finance majors
Students in a variety of majors and courses can access Bloomberg Terminals to conduct research and achieve certifications. With more than 8,000 data sets in equities, commodities, ESG and more, the terminals can provide current and historic data for student research in data analytics, global commerce, sustainability and environmental studies, and more.
A sample of information available through Bloomberg Terminals
Equities: Global stock data, market indices, analyst estimates, and detailed company financials.
Fixed Income: Real-time and historical data on over 5 million bonds, including government, corporate, and municipal debt.
Commodities: Pricing, supply chain logistics, and trade data for energy, metals, and agriculture.
Currencies: Global exchange rates and foreign exchange (FX) market metrics.
Funds & ETFs: Net asset values (NAV), assets under management (AUM), and foundational reference data.
Economics: Macroeconomic indicators, central bank policies, and country-level statistics.
Alternative Data: Nontraditional datasets like web traffic, supply chain tracking, and consumer transactions to measure public company performance.
ESG Data: Environmental, Social, and Governance metrics, carbon emissions, and diversity data.
Bloomberg Certifications
Denison students can achieve Bloomberg certifications in four areas: Bloomberg Financial Fundamentals, Bloomberg Market Concepts, Bloomberg Environmental Social Governance, and Bloomberg Spreadsheet Analysis. The certifications are self-paced and interactive. They explore real-life scenarios through the perspectives of various professionals. Learn more.
Bloomberg Financial Fundamentals
Learn how money flows through an economy, investment strategies and the varying risks associated with them, career paths and some tools and strategies to pursue them. Modules include:
- The Purpose of Investing
- Types of Investing
- Risk and Reward
- Portfolio Management
Bloomberg Market Concepts
Discover how economic indicators are published and analyzed, the role of central banks in inflation and deflation, bond valuation processes, and Terminal functionality. Modules include:
- Economic Indicators
- Currencies
- Fixed Income
- Equities
- Terminal Basics
- Commodities
- Stock Options
- Portfolio Management
Bloomberg Environmental Social Governance
Analyze how ESG considerations are integrated into the investment decision-making process, how shareholder activism can influence corporate behavior, reporting on ESG investment activities for EU funds, and practice tasks. Modules include:
- Intro to ESG and Sustainable Finance
- Research and Adopting ESG
- Negative and Positive Screening
- ESG Integration – Fixed Income
- ESG Integration – Equities
- Corporate Governance and Shareholder Activism
- Reporting Sustainability Activities
Bloomberg Spreadsheet Analysis
Using Bloomberg Query Language (BQL), construct queries in Excel to retrieve and analyze financial data, screen equities by criteria, identify sustainable dividend-paying stocks and benchmark performance, evaluate corporate debt structures and credit risk, build dynamic dashboards and modular formulas. Modules include:
- Introduction to BQL
- BQL for Macroeconomic Analysis
- BQL for Equities
- BQL for Fixed Income
