Smeal, Omega Bank Partner On High School Financial Education Project

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (April 6, 2007) – Select high school students in 11 Central Pennsylvania counties served by Omega Bank will visit Penn State's Smeal College of Business this month to learn more about stock trading, explore the college's state-of-the-art Trading Room, and meet with students in the college's Peer2Peer Financial Counseling Project, a program that connects Smeal students with high school students interested in finance.

The day-long program planned for April 13 includes a tour of Smeal's Business Building, a competitive stock trading simulation led by Smeal finance students, and an informal lunch with Smeal student mentors who will discuss their college experience. A tour of the Penn State campus will conclude the day. 

The participating high school students are contestants in EconomicsPennsylvania's award-winning Stock Market Game, a ten-week simulation of Wall Street trading that each year attracts about 40,000 students in grades four through twelve. Omega Bank's Center for Economic Education provides financial support for the Stock Market Game and other educational programs offered by EconomicsPennsylvania in Central Pennsylvania.

The bank also sponsors the Peer2Peer Financial Counseling project, which was initiated because of the interest of Donita Koval, president and chief executive officer of Omega Bank.

In the coming years, the trip to Penn State will be a reward for Central Pennsylvania teams that do well in the The Stock Market Game.

"Omega Bank is very proud to partner with the Smeal College of Business in expanding the Peer2Peer program to enhance the financial lessons of the Stock Market Game," said Koval. "Our reward is in knowing that through these programs our future generations will be better informed of the economic concepts essential in making sound decisions," Warren Chu, a Schreyer Honors College student majoring in supply chain and information systems at Smeal, serves as vice president of the Smeal Student Mentors and coordinator of the Peer2Peer Project.

"This is the first major expansion of the Peer2Peer project," Warren said. "For the past two years, we have hosted Penns Valley High School personal finance and consumer economics classes for a similar program in the Trading Room. We are pleased to expand our reach to other Central Pennsylvania school districts in the future through a partnership with EconomicsPennsylvania and the Omega Bank Center for Economic Education."

About EconomicsPennsylvania
EconomicsPennsylvania is the largest not-for-profit K-12 economic and financial literacy organization in Pennsylvania and a commendation affiliate of the National Council on Economic Education. For more information about EconomicsPennsylvania programs, call 570-372-9997 or visit www.economicspa.org.

About Omega Bank
Omega Bank, a $1.8 billion diversified financial institution, serves the needs of individuals, businesses, municipalities and organizations with a variety of deposit, loan, wealth management and related services, with 64 offices in 13 Pennsylvania counties in central and northeastern Pennsylvania.

Omega Bank and its predecessors have always maintained a strong commitment to the economic environment of the various cities and towns in its market regions.

About the Smeal College of Business
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.

Smeal's Trading Room replicates a real-world trading experience and functions as a classroom and a laboratory. Several televisions offer access to live coverage of financial news and real-time tickers and stock boards provide students with the latest financial information, including live Bloomberg and Reuters data feeds. Each of the 54 dual-monitor workstations in the Trading Room is equipped with the software needed for virtually any finance-related activity. For more details, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/traderoom.