Faculty spotlight: Michael Schostak

The Wayne State University School of Business is proud to announce that Michael Schostak has joined the faculty as an adjunct professor in the Department of Finance. 

As founder of Schostak Capital Advisors, he provides management consulting and transaction advisory services to small- and medium-sized businesses across numerous industries. Schostak brings more than 15 years of professional experience and a broad range of skills to the classroom, including financial modeling and analysis, capital structure management, strategic analysis, mergers & acquisitions and more. 

Throughout his career, Schostak has noticed a gap that exists between what business schools today are teaching and the competencies employers are expecting in their new hires.  His new class seeks to bridge that gap by teaching students the practical applications of the core financial concepts, especially through the use of modeling techniques in Microsoft Excel. 

“It is not enough to understand the fundamentals of time value of money or the concept of a return on investment,” Schostak said. “Students also have to know the practical applications of these core finance concepts in managerial problem solving.”

Being able to approach the questions that regularly confront businesses – such as how a product or division is performing or the feasibility of a new product or company  – with a quantitative framework and a thorough analysis is what sets apart great employees from the crowd. Schostak uses Microsoft Excel in and out of the classroom to answer these questions. “Excel is not just helpful in performing these analyses, but can actually save time and make the output much more relevant,” he said.

Carlos Pierre, director of the WSU School of Business Career Planning and Placement Office, said, “We are seeing an increase in job postings where Excel is a desired qualification or even a mandatory skill.  It is certainly a skill that can help elevate a student’s candidacy as employers too often have to spend time and additional resources training new college grads on Excel once they begin employment.”

Schostak hopes that students taking his Applied Financial Analysis course (FIN 5000) will be able to frame a business question in an analytical framework and use Excel to perform logical calculations with meaningful and easy to understand outputs on which to base decision making.

A native of metro Detroit, Schostak earned his B.S. in Economics with concentrations in finance, management and real estate from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his M.B.A. with emphasis in finance from the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. He returned to Detroit in 2008 after three years in New York working for the former global investment bank Lehman Brothers, Inc. and two years in Washington, DC working on defense and intelligence agency engagements with leading consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.

 

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