While Butler prepares students for academic success, a career mentor and professor saw an opportunity to start equipping students with an additional type of knowledge: financial literacy.
Randy Brown, Executive Career Mentor in the Andre B. Lacy School of Business, was inspired to start a personal finance program after hearing students’ concerns about paying off their student loans. Little did he know that in the same building, Dr. Bryan Foltice, Associate Professor of Finance, had the same idea.
“I’ll never forget the conversation we had,” Foltice says. “We realized we were each other’s missing piece.”
While Foltice is the personal finance expert, Brown (former Chief HR Officer of Anthem, Inc.) had a vision for how the program could be organized and executed. And after many more conversations, the Money Strong approach was born.
The program kicked off in the 2024 fall semester with four components: Money Talks, a “Managing Student Loans” webinar, the student-run Personal Finance Club, and one-on-one guidance when needed.
Money Talks took place on September 16, October 7, and November 7, and featured high-level discussions about budgeting and investing.
In addition to the finance tips, students in attendance also earned a Butler Cultural Requirement (of which they need eight to graduate) for each of the sessions.
“We’re both very grateful for the support we got from the Provost’s Office, who approved this for BCR credit,” Brown says. “We know that was a powerful driver of getting people just to show up.”
And show up, they did.
Roughly 175 students attended each of the Money Talks sessions, filling up the just-over-200-seat room in Jordan Hall. And around half of the students in attendance came from colleges other than the Lacy School of Business.
“Probably the best testament to whether or not it was useful is that 45 percent of the people who came to session one came back for another session,” Brown says.
In addition, 85 percent of surveyed students found the content “very useful.”
The second component of Money Strong was a live, large group session in the Atherton Union Reilly Room tailored to the 60 percent of students who have taken out student loans. Led by Geoff Beck ’18, Certified Financial Planner, the session also included a Q&A session with two recent grads, both of whom have had success managing loan payoff post-graduation. Butler’s Student Government Association (SGA) promoted the event.
Money Strong’s third component, the Personal Finance Club, also launched in fall semester 2024. The club provides students with financial literacy resources and peer support and has already gained more than 100 members.
The final component is personalized support from volunteer professional financial advisors, some of whom are alumni.
“We put a flag out during the Money Talks, saying, ‘Look, if you go through this exercise, and you start feeling overwhelmed, this is your cue to reach out to our support system,’” Foltice says. “And that’s what we’ve built with financial advisors. We have people who are there to tackle this hard situation, to make sure that everyone knows they’re not doing it alone.”
To the program’s founders, this is just the beginning.
Moving forward, Brown and Foltice plan for the program to give the Personal Finance Club more of the spotlight.
“It’s amazing, the quality of the students we have around us, and we want to now let them run with things in the spring semester and support them,” Brown says. “They’ve supported us this semester and now we want to flip and let them be the lead dogs and we’ll support them.”
Another goal they have is to share their resources with alumni.
“There is a long game here,” Brown says. “We’re really pleased that the launch has been so well-attended and received by students. Over time, we hope we can go deeper with these topics.”