A Holistic Approach to Learning with a Healthy Dose of Flexibility

June 4, 2026 4 minute read

Finance Degree with Real-World Experience: Using FactSet and Student Investment Funds to Bring Investing to Life

Brian Adams, PhD, MBA ’96, a professor of finance at University of Portland's School of Business, takes a holistic approach to helping students reach their academic and career goals by creating a classroom experience that fosters life-long learning and gives them the tools to solve tomorrow’s challenges.

Hands-on experience is a large part of the curriculum in Professor Adams’ classes. For example, students learn to use a tool called FactSet for financial analysis on publicly traded firms and global economies. “All of my courses have assignments where students use FactSet to help them find deeper answers compared to what AI models generate,” he said. FactSet brings data on global markets, public/private companies, equity/fixed income portfolios, and risk management into a single workstation and data feed. It also allows students to create financial models, monitor portfolios, and conduct income portfolios.

From First-Generation Student to Finance Professor: Brian Adams’ Journey

Having been around the financial industry his entire life, Professor Adams took an interest in it early on. His dad worked as a banker for First Interstate Bank of Oregon, then went on to Wells Fargo. When Adams had the chance, he worked as a bank teller during summer breaks and then at a finance company. Soon after, he became the first in his family to get a higher education degree.

While at the finance company, he earned his MBA at University of Portland. “After graduating, I was asked to teach Managerial Finance at UP during my lunch breaks,” he said. “That experience led me to enroll in the PhD program at Arizona State University.” As a first-generation undergraduate and graduate student, Professor Adams blazed his own trail and went beyond what he thought was possible.

As luck would have it, an opportunity arose to teach at UP soon after he earned his PhD. “I was not going to pass up the opportunity to teach alongside some of my favorite professors during my MBA program, such as Dr. Chatrath and Dr. Adrangi,” he said. “So, I returned home in 2003 and started my academic career on The Bluff.”

Adapting to Change: Teaching Finance Through a Pandemic and Beyond

Since then, Professor Adams has continually enjoyed teaching—even through the pandemic, though he remembers how everything shifted during that time. “During the pandemic, the learning experience moved online, and every day I missed the classroom,” he said. “I realized the interaction between the professor and the students, and the students with each other, was what creates value in a learning environment.” So, he learned how to build community even while conducting class online—lessons that still serve him well today. The combination of technology, flexibility, and real-world engagement that he mastered are hallmarks of UP’s graduate business programs, where technology-enhanced, experiential learning models meet students where they are while anticipating the evolving demands of a rapidly changing world.

Research-Driven Teaching: Staying Ahead in Portfolio Management

To stay up to date on all things finance, Professor Adams is involved with a research project analyzing why the University of Portland Investment Association (UPIA), a student-led finance club, has outperformed the S&P 500 from 2015 – 2025. “This is the type of scholarship that not only keeps me current on portfolio management research, but it also helps me understand what we are getting right in the curriculum,” he said.

UPIA manages a portfolio of around $1 million and serves as a place where students can discover their professional selves, prepare for top finance roles, and enhance their understanding of the financial landscape through networking and investing with real money. The club aims to provide all students with exposure to investing in public markets and empowers them to manage their own finances throughout their lives.

It also serves as a thought-provoking contrast to another student-managed investment portfolio. “In the Applied Portfolio Management course I teach, students manage another fund that is approximately $400,000 in value,” he said. “The difference in strategies is the UPIA fund invests holistically, where there is one strategy for the fund. With our other student-run portfolio, students work in asset class groups to manage a slice of the portfolio while working with the other asset classes to jointly run the entire fund.”

AACSB-Accredited Business School with Experiential Finance Learning

The School of Business is one of just 6% of business schools worldwide that have earned AACSB’s rigorous accreditation, which is considered the best in the world. “Our class sizes are rarely above 30 students, which allows us to provide a higher-level of service (teaching, networking, etc.) for our students,” said Adams. “It is easier to have a valuable learning environment when everyone in the classroom knows each other.”

Flexibility is baked into the curriculum. Professor Adams said, “Whether it is Zooming into a class session while traveling or the midnight email to a professor asking for a deadline extension due to an illness or a family matter, the School of Business at UP provides solutions that help students stay on track.”