By Rebekah Cozier
The Career Development Center and Brock School of Business are working together with Regions Bank to launch a new convocation series this spring. This three-part convocation series will be teaching students financial literacy, which will help them learn how to manage their money and reach their financial goals.
Regions Bank’s Financial Literacy Initiative is a long-standing program that is established at many universities across the country. The Career Development Center and Brock School of Business are excited to be collaborating with Regions Bank to provide Samford students with this resource.
Kathryn Boyd is the Director of Professional Success in the Brock School of Business and one of the many people working to make this program a success.
“Regions is a strong partner for the Brock School of Business,” Boyd said “Their recruitment team is fantastic, and we work with them often.”
The goal of the Financial Literacy program is to teach students why it is important for them to learn to manage their finances now, rather than later. Dora Ditchfield, Director of Samford’s Career Development Center, believes that it is necessary for students to understand the seriousness of making good financial decisions in college.
“It’s important that students learn this for themselves, as they start their career, how to manage their money to meet their financial goals,” Ditchfield said. “They don’t need to be limited in their career choices because they made poor, uninformed choices when they were college students.”
Ditchfield worked as a corporate recruiter for a financial institution for many years before starting her work in Career Development. She said that many new graduates who applied for jobs at the institution could not be hired because of their poor credit scores.
“One of the reasons that there are multiple offices collaborating on this and we’re really excited about it is because it’s a topic that most students never learn about in college,” Ditchfield said. “Everybody thinks it’s somebody else’s job. It’s falling between the cracks for our students.”
Boyd agreed that this topic is important for college students to know and understand.
“We are called to be good stewards, as Christians, of our money,” Boyd said.“And so, when this all started, we thought this is a great opportunity for students to learn how to save their money and how to appropriately make a budget.”
The Financial Literacy program will consist of three separate seminars that Samford students can sign up to attend virtually. The first seminar will occur on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. and will focus on the basics of banking. Kathryn Boyd and Dora Ditchfield both stated that they are especially excited for the third and final seminar, which will give students real-world budgeting situations to practice with.
The Career Development Center is devoted to helping students identify and reach their goals, and this convocation series is one of the many resources they are offering to students this semester. Contact the Career Development Center for information on how to register for the virtual meeting.
