Farmingdale State Alum Donates $750K For Student-Managed Investment Fund

FARMINGDALE, NY — Murray Pasternack, who graduated Farmingdale State College in 1960, donated $750K to his alma mater for a student-managed investment fund, the school announced.

Pasternack is one of the college's "most active and largest alumni supporters." The gift came from him and his life partner, Judy Berkowitz.

The newly created fund will support the FSC Student-Managed Investment Fund and the renovation of the new "Murray Pasternack ’60 Finance and Trading Room," complete with stock market ticker displays, 16 Bloomberg Terminals and individual subscriptions to the Barron’s & MarketWatch education program for students to advance their finance education.

"I am at a point in life that allows me to reflect back on the path I took and to thank those institutions that helped me achieve my goals," Pasternack said in a news release. "I can't think of a better way to thank the school that contributed greatly to my success, than to provide the tools needed to train the next generation."

Under the guidance of a faculty advisor and an alumni advisory council of additional investors at $10,000 a member, FSC students will operate as a boutique trading firm, to oversee the Murray Pasternack ‘60 Student-Managed Investment Fund with a starting portfolio budget of $500K.

The students will manage assets on behalf of the Farmingdale College Foundation, for the School of Business. The fund offers an applied learning experience by providing relevant, real-world learning and application of concepts of asset valuation, equity research, and portfolio management.

"Murray’s generous and continued philanthropic support has had a profound impact on our long-established tradition as an engine of opportunity to high achieving, working class students of Long Island, and offers our students the resources to help them reimagine what’s possible," Farmingdale State College President John Nader said.

The college is "deeply grateful" to Pasternack for the student-focused funding, said Matthew Colson, the school's vice president for development and alumni engagement. The donation will create an "unprecedented learning experience" for students interested in security analysis, portfolio management and more.

"It will also afford our students the opportunity to be better educated and informed for their own personal financial well-being," Colson said.

The new investment fund also supports the renovation of a third-floor School of Business classroom into the Murray Pasternack ’60 Finance and Trading Room, a collaborative space that will simulate a trading room experience. Students can develop their asset management skills with access to technology used by top financial institutions, including investment software, subscriptions, and real-time business data using 16 dual-monitored Bloomberg workstations and two new LCD television screens at the front of the lab.

Through the fund, the School of Business lobby and trading lab entrance will feature newly installed stock market ticker displays, which will provide financial market news, U.S. market indexes, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq, currencies, commodities, and stock price changes for the top 100 U.S. stocks. The ticker information is provided by Rise Display, Inc., which receives the stock price feed from Reuters.

"The goal is to spur financial education, learn from investing’s best minds, and foster professional growth," Colson said. "Our students will have access to the same real-time content that provides perspective, insights, and analysis utilized by the most successful business professionals. This is truly an investment in their future."

Last year, FSC dedicated the Murray Pasternack (’60) Lab for Radio Frequency and Microwave Technology located in Lupton Hall, and commemorated his $1.4 million gift to FSC, the largest individual gift made in the college’s history. Previously, Pasternack provided two $500,000 gifts to support the launch of FSC’s Honors Program which provides 20 annual scholarships to engineering technology honors students.

"It is extremely rewarding to hear from the students that have benefited from the scholarship program I funded," Pasternack said. "Also, it has been very rewarding to hear from the faculty and students that are using the new state-of-the-art Radio Frequency and Microwave Laboratory."

He said he looks forward to the same with this new gift to the School of Business.

Originally from Franklin Square, Pasternack received his AAS degree in electrical technology from FSC. He was founder and CEO of Pasternack Enterprises in Irvine, California from 1972 to 1992, a world-class supplier of radio frequency and microwave components, where his signature catalog became the industry standard.

"Our hope is that the gifts we have given, and those we will give in the future, will provide a life-changing education for students from working class families," he said.