A senior business and finance lecturer in Cornwall with over 20 years’ experience delivering degree and other professional courses, has just had his first technical reference book published.

Dr Bryan Mills, who works for Cornwall College in Pool, identified an opportunity for a concise text focusing on the most common problems and equations students at degree level are likely to face.

The publication, aimed at assisting both undergraduates and post-graduates, took 12 months to write, and offers academic students an easy to navigate reference book looking at calculations from first principles, quickly moving to application.

“Having taught business and finance at such a high level and over many years, I began to see that students were expected to know lots of complicated equations and know how to apply them, and in reality few people can actually recall these methods,” said Dr Mills.

“So I began to experiment with focussing on shorter and more concise calculations which proved very popular with the students and this led to me writing a concise easy to read guide for all abilities.”

The publication, Financial Management Made Manageable, is available via on-line book sellers.

Dr Mills was instrumental in opening the first business school in Cornwall on the Cornwall College Pool campus, bringing to local students the opportunity to study a wide range of business and finance courses at degree level.

The college has earned a reputation for delivering excellent academic teaching in commerce subjects and has recently won a Centre of Excellence award from Young Enterprise and Personal Finance Education Group, for its associated business and finance programmes.

Dr Mills added: “My book covers the basics of financial management from the cost of equity and debt to investment appraisal and future contracts. The text is designed to be read alongside, not instead of, longer and more theoretical texts. Initial feedback from students has been wonderful and I’m already looking at writing my next book in the series."