Entrepreneur gives $750,000 gift to Farmingdale State College to make stock trading room for business students
Students walk the campus of Farmingdale State College, in East Farmingdale, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022. Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost
A Farmingdale State College graduate and technology entrepreneur has given his alma mater a $750,000 gift that will allow students to manage an investment fund and make actual trades with real money as part of their business education, school officials announced Tuesday.
The gift from Murray Pasternack, a Franklin Square native who graduated from Farmingdale State in 1960, will be used to renovate a third-floor classroom into a state-of-the-art trading room in Farmingdale's School of Business.
The facility, which will be designed to simulate the trading room experience, will be equipped with stock market tickers displaying the latest financial market news, 16 Bloomberg Terminals and individual subscriptions to Barron’s & MarketWatch.
Pasternack, the founder and former chief executive of Irvine, California-based Pasternack Enterprises, which supplies radio frequency and microwave components, said he hopes the money will provide critical financial education to students from middle class families.
“In chatting with graduates, I learned that they really weren't getting any exposure to personal finance,” Pasternack said in an interview Tuesday. “I looked back to my time at the school and I got zero exposure, really, in personal finance. And I think it's very important.”
The new Murray Pasternack ’60 Student-Managed Investment Fund will operate with a starting portfolio budget of $500,000, with students managing assets on behalf of the Farmingdale College Foundation, officials said. The fund, Pasternack said, will be overseen by a committee that includes Farmingdale alumni and staff.
“This experience will help set a Farmingdale graduate apart when applying for jobs after college,” Richard Vogel, dean for the School of Business, said in a statement. “Our students will have more experience and a competitive advantage to be successful in their professional careers and personal wealth management when they leave FSC.”
In 2022, Pasternack gifted the school $1.4 million, the largest in Farmingdale's history, to establish a radio frequency and microwave technology lab. Last year, he donated another $500,000 to support the lab.
He previously gave the Farmingdale college a pair of $500,000 gifts for the launch of a student honors program, which provides 20 annual scholarships to engineering technology honors students.
“What I'm trying to do is give those students at Farmingdale the best possible education,” Pasternack said. “And that's why I've made donations of scholarships, to a lab for electronic engineering, and now to the Business Department.”
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.
