UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When the Penn State Real Estate Advisory Board originated 15 years ago, its intent was to convene a group of people who would be tasked to expand and develop a real estate discipline in the Smeal College of Business, broaden existing offerings and engage alumni and faculty to help produce curriculum.
Fast forward a fabulous 15 years and allow Brent Ambrose, the Jason and Julie Borrelli Faculty Chair in Real Estate and the director of the Borrelli Institute for Real Estate Studies, to cite the board’s achievements within that time span:
“We created a new undergraduate major in real estate in Smeal; a new undergraduate real estate certificate opportunity for students in other majors within Smeal; a new master’s of science in real estate analysis and development and a masters of real estate in Smeal; an online graduate real estate certificate program focused on real estate law and valuation through World Campus; and an extracurricular real estate boot camp program to help students across Penn State learn more about various real estate career opportunities,” Ambrose said.
“We also now sponsor a Smeal College of Business undergraduate real estate case team that competes at real estate case competitions around the country. Our real estate Ph.D. program in Smeal continues to place students at top research universities. In addition, the Appraisal Foundation Appraisal Qualification Board, which is authorized by Congress as the source of appraisal standards and appraiser qualifications, recently approved Smeal’s bachelor’s and master’s real estate programs to count toward the education component associated with the appraisal licensing requirements — a significant achievement and testament to the quality of the programs we offer. Much of our success is due to the support of our advisory board members, such as Jason Borrelli and Carl Berquist, who believe in our programs and want to partner with us to truly offer a world-class real estate program at Penn State.”
According to Ambrose, the undergraduate major in real estate provides visibility for Smeal students and helps them with career and internship recruiting. “It gives us greater opportunities to align our programs with professional organizations and it provides us with the ability to be recognized in various university rankings as having a distinct real estate program,” he explained.
Career paths that students can explore from the real estate major include commercial brokerage, consulting, office leasing, complex valuation and counseling, mortgage and construction lending, property management, investment banking, securities analysis, and real estate development. Available courses range from corporate finance to corporate diversity, and from statistics to supply chain and information systems, with many challenging offerings in between.
When talks commenced about reinstating the real estate major at Penn State — it had been folded into the risk management major a decade ago — Jason Borrelli, senior principal at EQT Exeter in greater Philadelphia and a 1994 Penn State aerospace engineering graduate prior to undertaking endeavors in real estate, augmented an existing endowment and had a straightforward goal in mind.
“There were four or five names that always seemed to come up as the most known household names of real estate programs, and the idea was to make sure Penn State got in that mix,” Borrelli, who is the current chair of the board, said. “If people are going to rattle off who they think are the top five real estate programs, we should be one of them.”
He wanted the reinstatement plans to proceed without a financial hitch.
“Between Dean Chuck Whiteman and Brent (Ambrose), they targeted a number of about $10 million so they can support research and support programs and case study competitions,” Borrelli explained.
Borrelli was able to add $5 million to the endowment that already contained more than $6 million.
“I’m more of a believer that if you’re going to do philanthropy, do it while you’re alive and see how it affects or what grows out of it,” he said. “The last objection was not having enough money raised and I said, ‘OK, it’s time to overcome that objection and make a commitment and go to the University and make the request that real estate is a stand-alone major.
“That’s how things evolved and how we got to where we are today, which is having real estate as its own major and having this institute. It doesn’t necessarily matter to me that my name’s on it, but just having that named institute that shows commitment. It gives Chuck and Brent a certain amount of confidence and a certain amount of clout when it comes to talking to their peers about what Penn State real estate offers relative to our competition,” Borrelli said.
The increased interest in a real estate major — as well as other certificate or master’s programs — can be attributed to the classification of real estate as an accepted asset class for investment within funds, as well as the increased awareness of how commercial real estate impacts many other industries, according to incoming Penn State Real Estate Advisory Board Vice Chair Claudia Steeb, senior managing director in the Pittsburgh office of JLL Capital Markets, Americas.
“Now that real estate is an accepted asset class for investments, major funds can invest in real estate to achieve overall fund returns, and this has increased job opportunities for real estate majors,” Steeb explained. “Many major corporations own their own real estate, rather than leasing space, which also creates a demand for real estate majors within the corporate world. Real estate expertise has many more applications today, and I have seen students seek out universities with real estate-specific programs, often combining them with a minor in finance, accounting or economics, among other programs.”
The board has partnered across Penn State to establish a real estate presence within Smeal. One of the board’s co-founders, Peter Cocoziello, founder, president and CEO of Advance Realty Investors in Bridgewater, New Jersey, said real estate interfaces with everybody each and every day.
“If you go shopping, you walk into real estate, which is the shopping center. If you go travel, you walk into a hotel, it’s real estate. If you go to a Broadway show or any kind of movie theaters, it’s real estate,” Cocoziello said. “Same thing with people working. Same thing with manufacturing. And if you look at Amazon, every product that you've ever received from Amazon, passed through real estate … it was inside of a building. Real estate is a very encompassing industry that covers all facets.”
As the industry becomes more sophisticated, Cocoziello said, integrating real estate into the Smeal curriculum that has multiple disciplines and abundant research is an impressive option.
“It's great for alumni … for continuous learning … for professors … for speaking … for seminars … it just cascades all over the place,” he said. “We're really at the infancy stage here. The opportunities that lie in front of Penn State are really boundless.”
Cocoziello said analytics continue to reveal that the expanding real estate industry is much more sophisticated and universities such as Penn State are wise to advocate for real estate programs.
Diane Wade, head of sustainability for Listed Securities at CBRE Investment Management in Philadelphia, completed her time as chair of the Penn State Real Estate Advisory Board in October. She said the board has worked to expose students to various aspects of real estate by putting them in close contact with board members.
“We help by providing speakers and networking events for the students to learn from professionals. We put together site visits where the students can visit and learn about real estate firms and the market,” Wade said. “We host competitions such as the REIT Stock Pitch competition, which gives them experience in analysis and public speaking.
“Our board members enjoy engaging with the students, to give the students a closer look at different careers in real estate. The whole point of our board is to help the students understand the industry better and find suitable career paths; our members definitely enjoy speaking with the students.”
Steeb cited the importance of the real estate advisory board members maintaining a substantial connection to the new real estate major.
“Given the diverse backgrounds of the members of the board, we all review other university real estate programs to look for ways to continue to improve our new major at Smeal,” she said. “Since this is a new program, we need to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses to determine what must be done to continue to enhance the educational experience for students and to address any weaknesses within the program.”
She emphasized the importance of maintaining strong alumni ties to get feedback from employers who hire Smeal real estate majors and identify opportunities to enhance the current program. “In general, we need to determine if there are additional needs to better prepare our students to enter and be successful in the real estate field. If you have a passion for what you do, you will most likely be successful. We need to find students with the passion for real estate and provide them with the tools necessary for success in this field,” Steeb said.
As the real estate advisory board’s co-founder, Simon Ziff, president of Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group in New York City, said Smeal has an “extraordinary” alumni network with a strong presence in real estate.
“This board was intended to harness that group to help our students interested in pursuing a career in real estate,” Ziff said. “We’ve always felt those students interested in real estate would benefit from being able to tell potential employers they were real estate majors and be on equal footing with those graduating from competing programs. We’re glad it was finally able to get done.”
The board’s intent now is to ensure that the collaboration continues. If past is prologue, the board will continue to provide students with resources and opportunities and assist with scholarship.
Wade noted that the board hosted a panel in 2019 on the topic of diversity in real estate, and in 2020 during the height of the global pandemic, webinars occurred that connected students with board members and alumni about the subject of real estate trends.
“We (also) partnered with Smeal’s Center for Supply Chain Research for a webinar related to supply chain and industrial real estate, and we partnered with the School of Hospitality Management (outside of Smeal) for a call related to the hospitality industry and real estate,” Wade said. “Additionally, since the board has been in existence for 15 years, our board has served as a model for other programs within Smeal who are creating their own boards to supplement their own programs.”
Steeb and Borrelli detailed partnerships that allowed students to take ARGUS (a real estate investment and valuation tool) classes and testing, a key program used in valuing and evaluating commercial real estate properties. “We worked with an appraisal firm to expand student knowledge of real estate valuation techniques and the importance of including all key factors, as no two pieces of real estate are alike,” Steeb said.
Borrelli cited how a Penn State Smeal graduate seeking a job can possess an upper hand in the interview process because of being certified to use ARGUS from day one in an employment situation. “That is a huge, huge advantage for a Penn State graduate to say ‘I don’t (just) know ARGUS because I used it in my investment class or my evaluation class, I actually am certified in it,” Borrelli said.
Steeb also noted that board members have worked with alumni to assist with case study competition teams. “That has brought improved results, and better prepared students entering the workforce. We have expanded the networking opportunities for students using the alumni network. And we continue to encourage students to take on internships — paid or unpaid — for the experience,” she said.
“We have continued to increase and expand the advisory board, which reflects the strength and interest from alumni in continuing to make Smeal one of the best real estate programs in the country.”
All of the options available to students, from advisory board interaction, to the boot camp and beyond, are invaluable, according to Borrelli.
“Those types of things, with the advisory board and people that are in industry having these interactions with students and faculty on a regular basis, really is something that differentiates Penn State from other programs," he said.