SHERMAN, TX-Austin College students can now keep track of the business world and the stock market in real-time through a program developed by one of their own.
Just weeks before graduating from Austin College, Chris Struble was asked to create a program that will update the college's stock market ticker automatically. Which, he said will allow students involved in the college's million dollar investment fund to monitor their stocks in real-time while investing with real money.

Monday, after weeks of programming, the Austin College Stock Market Display Ticker streamed live. It's a project, Austin College graduate Chris Struble was working on since he graduated in May.

"I think it's nice, it's a nice way to support the academic program to kinda validate what we're doing here by allowing me to use my skills in a real world situation," he said.

The art and computer science double-major said he developed a program that updates the news feed and stock quotes automatically, instead of plugging in figures manually.

"What my software does, you just give it the list and it automatically using publicly available feeds. It pulls information about stocks, arranges it and outputs it in a format that the board can read," he said.

"This ticker is a really nice new addition to our college, especially with the new programming that Chris did, which makes it really up to date and relays the information specifically what we need for our students here."

Business professor, David Griffith said the automatic real-time updates Struble's program performs tets students experience firsthand how often the stock market changes.

"That's the real world for business, it's a minute by minute game and you really gotta be on top of it. So we want our students to be on top of it," he said.

IT director, Bill Eggette said having Struble program the ticker not only saves them thousands of dollars, but also lets the college customize the program to fit its needs.

"Now we have the intelligence and understanding how it works, we also have the software in house that we own and we can control," he said.

"It's nice to know that the college believes in the education that they gave me and maybe other students can see that they will be believed in too," said Struble.

Eggette said if they decided to outsource programming the ticker the college will be spending up to $15,000 for the software.

Struble is also one of the developers of the Austin College Android App, which is expected to be released sometime next school year.