The Foundation for Credit Education (FCE) and University of Missouri-St. Louis are teaming up to create a "Center for Excellence in Financial Counselling."
The center will be arriving at its new home, here on the campus of UM-St. Louis on July 1st. It will be headed by President of the Foundation for Credit Education, Victoria Jacobson.
The Foundation for Credit Education donated 3.25 million dollars of assets to UM-St. Louis in order to create this partnership.
The Center for Excellence in Financial Counselling on UM-St. Louis campus will serve as a home base for the FCE nation wide, as majority of the counselling sessions will take place through conference calls. If a member of the community is seeking financial counselling, the Center for Excellence in Financial Counselling will get them into contact with the appropriate parties. For example a student having trouble with student loans would be put into contact with a counsellor specializing in student loans advisement.
Both the University and the Foundation for Credit Education will benefit greatly from this partnership, according to Jacobson.
Jacobson said that the center will benefit from receiving a plethora of research opportunities to use to improve credit counselling, and the university will benefit from the opportunities it brings the campus community, all of these things that will help to "enhance credit counselling for the consumer". The provost for the project, Glen Cope, explained that the implementation of center would benefit students in numerous ways. One way that students will be affected is that the implementation of the center will foster more research by the UM-St. Louis faculty.
"Faculty does a lot of research, research to help better inform people on credit." Cope said, "Faculty involves students in research."
Cope explained that another way students will benefit is that some of the pilot "curricula" that the center will be testing will actually be tested on students. Cope also expressed her confidence that Jacobson would do a great job on this pilot program.
"Vicki is going to be a very energetic, enthusiastic advocate for credit counselling and credit education [both] for students and the general public." Cope said, "I think it is extremely exciting that we will have that on our campus."
Chancellor Tom George also expressed his excitement of creating the center on campus. He described that he was "delighted" that it would involve so many of the colleges on UM-St. Louis campus. Some of the colleges that will be included will be the College of Business, the College of Education, and the School of Social Work.
"I am very pleased by this partnership that will create the Center for Excellence in Financial Counselling." George said, " The center can be a great service to our students and campus community."
Jacobson explained that not only will the center provide financial counselling on a variety of subjects, but that she hopes that center will help to encourage more awareness amidst students regarding credit education.
"There's a lot of understanding that if you just send people who are having financial problems to credit counselling, then magically everything is made better and they know everything," Jacobson said, "that's not totally true."
Jacobson went on to explain that there has not really been much research or "exploration" of what content each counselling session contains.
Jacobson claims that there is "no real look at how the session evolves". Because of this, the Center for Excellence in Financial Counselling is planning on expanding upon what has traditionally been considered acceptable financial counselling.
"We figure if there isn't some examination of the counselling sessions there certainly won't be any different outcomes than there have already been," Jacobson said.
Jacobson explains that the FCE will strive to "enhance the quality" of financial counselling. With this approach, Cope expressed her opinion that "there was no limit to how far" Jacobson could take the project.
Be the first to comment on this article!