Dallas College is expanding its Bloomberg Finance and Investment Program with a new initiative called “The Texas Ticker,” aimed at giving students more direct, hands-on experience with financial markets as North Texas continues to grow as a major financial center.
The initiative is part of the college’s broader “Y’all Street” Market Experience, which connects students to real-world financial tools through the Bloomberg Finance and Investment Labs and the Bloomberg Global Trading Challenge. The program is designed to give students exposure to how financial markets work in practice, not just in theory.
The move comes as North Texas’ financial sector grows, with firms relocating to Dallas as part of the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE). The program has come to be known as “Y’all Street.”
Eugene Kuan, senior manager of the Bloomberg program at Dallas College, said students first enter the program through certification training before moving into hands-on lab work with the Bloomberg systems.
“The Bloomberg program at the college is founded on two pillars, the first being the Bloomberg for education certification,” said Kuan.
“It’s a set of four certifications that students can earn from the program. It covers the fundamentals of markets and investing, e n v i r o n mental and social governance [and] s p r e ads h e e t analysis tools that financial professionals use day to day.”
He mentioned those certifications are often the entry point for students, who then transition into Bloomberg Finance and Investment Labs located across six Dallas College campuses.
In those labs, students work directly with Bloomberg terminals, the same type of systems used in professional finance settings, to explore market data and complete assignments tied to real financial information.
“The second pillar is the Bloomberg terminals in finance labs,” said Kuan.
Experience with the labs serve as preparation spaces for the Bloomberg Global Trading Challenge, an international competition where student teams manage a simulated portfolio and respond to real market changes over several weeks in the fall.
Teams consist of three to five students who research companies, track performance and make trading decisions in a live simulation.
Dr. Kevin Wortley, associate deputy chancellor of small business operations, said Dallas College is expanding participation in that competition under “The Texas Ticker” initiative, with a goal of involving more students across campuses and introducing dual credit high school students to the experience.
Wortley said students will be required to set up their portfolios and make their trades on the Bloomberg terminals on campus, making in-person lab access a key part of participation.
He added that while the program has traditionally been limited in scale, the expansion reflects growing interest in finance education and workforce readiness across the region.
Kuan said the Bloomberg Global Trading Challenge only takes place during one month of the year. The rest of the time Bloomberg lab is not treated as a trading space. It is about building comfort with financial data and the tools students will likely see in the workplace.
“It’s not a trading space. That’s one thing that people often think happens here. That’s not the case. It’s more to get students the familiarity with the data that’s available to them, so that when these students go out into the workforce, they know how to pull the data very easily because they’ve done it before. That’s the main idea,” Kuan said.
College officials say the expansion also aligns with broader changes in North Texas. More financial institutions are moving to North Texas and the Texas Stock Exchange is expected to strengthen the region’s role in national markets.
Tammy Galloway, chair of School of Business, Hospitality and Global Trade at Dallas College, said the program’s multi-campus structure helps strengthen workforce training efforts and allows the college to build stronger connections with employer partners looking for students with practical financial skills.
“The Texas Ticker” is ultimately intended to expand access to real-world financial learning, while building a pipeline between students and the region’s growing financial industry as “Y’all Street” continues to take shape in Dallas.
The Bloomberg Program is a certificate program and is free for any student, regardless of major, who is registered for classes at Dallas College.