Students, staff and alumni of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management celebrated Whitman Day on Tuesday, commemorating the 2003 naming of SU’s School of Management and honoring the entrepreneurial spirit of Whitman, who is well known and well regarded in the investment world.

To date, the School of Management is the only business school that offers distress investing, which is due in large part to the research Whitman conducted in the area of stockholder litigation and bankruptcy.

The official launch of the Orange Value Fund took place following a roundtable discussion with Martin J. Whitman. The Orange Value Fund will be a partnership of Whitman students who will make investment decisions on real money.

‘The fund is designed to prepare students for careers on Wall Street,’ said Amy Mehringer, manager of Whitman Communications.

The value fund will also be integrated into student coursework and will include courses on how to buy and sell stocks and how to identify value in a company, said Angab Rajpal, a first-year finance and accounting master’s student.

The day of commemoration culminated with a lecture in the Marvin and Helaine Lender Auditorium, located at the School of Management. The lecture featured keynote speaker Samuel Zell, founder and chairman of Equity Group Investments.

In his lecture, titled ‘Life from an Entrepreneurial Perspective – What Makes Sammy Run,’ Zell spoke primarily on entrepreneurship and real estate.

‘What impressed me most about the lecture and the panel discussion was the motivation the speakers incited,’ said second-year finance and marketing graduate student Cristina Grigore. ‘There was a passion and a drive inside all of the speakers.’

Ernest Morrow, a volunteer at the Office of International Services, said he thought the lecture was ‘fantastic.’

‘Zell’s lecture shows what an immigrant can accomplish. He had established goals and desires, coupled with the phenomenal opportunities America provided him with,’ Morrow said.

Zell’s lecture was followed by a reception in the Milton Room, located on the School of Management’s fourth floor.

At the end of the day’s festivities, Morrow called Whitman Day a ‘great idea.’

‘It gives members of the school of management a chance to get together, helps spawn new ideas on finance and entrepreneurship and reflects the good that can be done by someone in a position of wealth and power,’ Morrow said.

Published on April 4, 2006 at 12:00 pm