FINANCIAL EDUCATION
As Director of the the Take Charge America Institute here at the University of Arizona from 2007-2016, I gained extensive experience in developing and scaling up financial education programs. We expanded to a national scale our flagship outreach program, the award-winning Take Charge Today curriculum for high school and middle school teachers. Take Charge Today develops and distributes (free of charge) an extensive, activity-based personal finance curriculum for high-school and middle-school classrooms and companion teacher support and professional development. More than 48,000 teachers nationwide are authorized users of the curriculum.
The quality of our materials was acknowledged by the U.S. Treasury Department when in it included three Take Charge Today lessons as part of its educator toolkit to support its 2011 National Financial Capability Challenge.
Also, through a partnership with the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) beginning in 2014, we created a national online resource center for personal finance educators, hosted at the University of Arizona. MoneyTeach provides curriculum resources and lesson suggestions to give new personal finance teachers a trusted place to start when building their courses.
"Warm and Fuzzy Financial Education Doesn't Cut it Anymore"
"That’s the driving force behind Credit-Wise Cats, which began modestly in the late 1990s with a $6,000 grant from Take Charge America, a Phoenix-based non-profit credit-counseling agency. Today, the program boasts 13 student-educators representing all grade levels, and academic majors ranging from pre-med to sociology."
This year's outstanding paper award was shared by Philippe d'Astous of HEC Montreal and Gopi Shah Goda of Stanford University.
2019 Cherry Blossom Financial Education Institute
In April, the 5th annual Cherry Blossom Financial Education Institute converged at George Washington University--hosted by GW's Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center (GFLEC)--to discuss what works in financial education.
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The origins of the institute date back to a convening of researchers at the University of Arizona in 2014 to discuss how to create a cadre of scholars focused on studying the impact of financial education. From that initial meeting came the plan to host an annual research conference at GW each April.