Alumni donate $3.6 million to applied security analysis center

The finance alumni of the School of Business have raised more than $3.6 million to name a center in honor of a former professor.

The Stephen L. Hawk Center for Applied Security Analysis, being dedicated on Friday, Oct. 15, will include the business school’s nationally known applied security analysis program. Established in 1970, the program was the first of its kind in the nation and has been a training ground for many of the country’s top money managers.

Alumni of the business school’s Applied Security Analysis Program (ASAP) have given $3.6 million to the center, with plans to raise an eventual endowment of $5 million.

Hawk

The center is being named for Stephen L. Hawk, chairman and CEO of Northern Capital Management in Madison. Hawk joined the business school’s teaching staff in 1965. He served as ASAP advisor from 1970 to 1983 and has remained involved in ASAP, serving on its advisory board.

Business School Dean Andrew J. Policano says, “We were extremely fortunate to have had Steve Hawk help us build a top investment program. His depth of industry knowledge and fierce dedication to the program’s students have enabled us to build an outstanding program in this area.”

ASAP started with a gift of $100,000 from the Brittingham Trust in 1970. Investment growth and additional gifts have increased student equity funds to over $1.7 million. In addition, ASAP students manage $10 million in fixed-income securities for the UW System.

Associate professor Mark Fedenia, the current director of ASAP, said the $3.6 million endowment will “expand the resources available to ASAP, ensure that finance courses crucial to ASAP are offered at a high-quality level and, in general, maintain Wisconsin’s leadership position in finance education.”

Hawk will be honored at special dedication dinner Oct. 15 in conjunction with the biennial conference and reunion of the ASAP graduates. A tribute to the late professor Frank Graner, credited with laying the groundwork for the applied security analysis program, will be held earlier in the day.

For more information, contact Debora Treu in the Business School’s Department of Finance, Investment and Banking, (608) 262-9039; or visit: http://www-asap.bus.wisc.edu/asap/.