I love the fact Fort Hays State University provides our students with so many powerful outside-of-the-classroom learning opportunities. Take for example our extraordinarily successful financial planning team \u2013 which just placed third in the nation. Our success is clearly attributed to a drive for excellence from our faculty and the talents of our students. That\u2019s powerful!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meet this year\u2019s team: Seth Thompson, a junior from Salina, majoring in accounting and finance, and two finance majors, who also are members of our cross country and track and field teams \u2013\u00a0 freshman Kaden Wren from Scott City and junior Ethan Lang, a graduate of Hays\u2019 Thomas More Prep-Marian. These dedicated students are advised by Dr. Christina Glenn, assistant professor of economics, finance, and accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nannual Financial Planning Challenge is sponsored by the Financial Planning\nAssociation (FPA), an association for financial planning professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According\nto Dr. Glenn, the competition takes an extraordinary amount of work, and many\ntimes students who compete have not completed all of their financial planning\ncoursework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\nlook for students who are highly motivated to dig deeper into the financial\nplanning coursework, who are self-starters with a strong competitive spirit \u2013\nstudents who are willing to put in the extra time and effort it takes to\nsuccessfully compete against the top schools in the nation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take\nfor example Kaden Wren. As a freshman, he had not taken classes that covered\nmany of these financial planning concepts that were part of the competition. No\nproblem. He researched the concepts on his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\nreally enjoyed the challenge of learning these concepts and using them in a\nreal-world situation,\u201d Kaden said. \u201cI\nbelieve this will greatly benefit my academic and professional career in the\nfuture.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\nthe first phase of the competition, all student teams are given profiles for\ntwo hypothetical clients and must prepare a comprehensive financial plan. They\ncannot get assistance from their professors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo\nhelp them prepare for the competition, we provide them with examples of\npreviously written case studies, so they know how to format their case, but we\nare not allowed to provide any planning suggestions,\u201d Dr. Glenn said. \u201cThe team\nreally must dig in and research the best options for the given case study.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seth\nfound it interesting that \u201cone of the things that stood out to me in this case\nstudy was how it catered to our unique circumstances in last year\u2019s\n\u2018coronaconomy.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur\nclients were travel bloggers who invested heavily in Tesla stock and liked\nRobinhood and Bitcoin,\u201d Seth said. \u201cIt kind of shed some light on the recent\njump in retail investors and how we can meet their needs. I felt like this\nprofile of client will become much more popular in the future, which will help\ntranslate into our future careers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A\nteam of judges determines the top eight written financial plans from phase one.\nThose teams, and only those teams, move on to the elite eight, which includes\nphases two and three of the competition. The eight teams selected to move\nforward this year were Edinboro University, Fort Hays State, Illinois State\nUniversity, Kansas State University, Purdue University, Texas Tech University,\nthe University of Arizona, and Western Kentucky University. In 14 years of\ncompetition, our team has made the elite eight 13 times. Incredible!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Phase\ntwo requires the team to present three areas of their financial planning\nrecommendations, one of which must be retirement planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe\nstudents have 20 minutes, which is a very short amount of time, to showcase\ntheir communication skills. They present to a team of judges who are instructed\nnot to interact with the students,\u201d Dr. Glenn explained. \u201cEssentially, they are\npresenting to a client who is not interacting back with them. It\u2019s very\nchallenging to have a client conversation without verbal or nonverbal cues, but\nour team did exceptionally well with this challenge.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To\nprepare for phase two of the challenge, Dr. Glenn had the team practice a few\ntimes with her, and then she called in reinforcements from and colleagues to\nprovide the students with feedback on how to improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Phase\nthree is the \u201cHow Do I Know?\u201d game show portion of the competition. Teams are\nquizzed Jeopardy-style on six areas of financial planning: insurance,\ninvestments, income tax, retirement planning, estate planning, and\nfundamentals. They are given 45 seconds to answer questions, with the points\nincreasing with the difficulty of the questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To\nprepare for this final phase, the team must be studying regularly for any\nnumber of possible questions that might be asked regarding the topics.\nSometimes the team members will audit classes that they are not currently\nenrolled in just to gain the knowledge for the competition. Now, that is\ndedication!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr.\nTom Johansen is responsible for starting and leading this annual challenge for\nFort Hays State. He handed over the program to Dr. Glenn and is very proud of\nher continued success coaching our students. In addition to earning a spot in\nthe elite eight 13 of the 14 years of competition, collectively our Tiger team\ntouts an impressive record: three national championships, one runner-up, four\nthird-place finishes, and three fourth-place efforts. FHSU also owns a fifth-\nand a seventh-place national finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As\nfor our current winners \u2013 they are back to their studies with ambitions,\ndreams, and goals. Seth is working toward certification as both a financial\nanalyst and a financial planner, and Ethan plans on opening up his own firm\nshortly after graduation \u2013 a goal shared by Kaden. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr.\nGlenn advises all her students to build their network of contacts in the\nindustry before they graduate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cReach\nout and ask people in your field about their experiences in the profession and\nthe advice they wish they knew starting out,\u201d she says. \u201cSeek out mentors who\ncan help you develop your skills, who can connect you with others who may have\njob openings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr.\nGlenn points out that \u201cthere are a lot of professionals out there who would love\nto guide new graduates as they start their professional journey. Connect with\nthem on LinkedIn, call and ask them if they would want to join you for coffee\nand chat about their experiences. More than likely, they will say yes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\nlook forward to continuing to follow the success of our financial planning team\nmembers, and more importantly, how all our alumni use their education to\nimprove lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tisa Mason is president of Fort Hays State University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love the fact Fort Hays State University provides our students with so many powerful outside-of-the-classroom learning opportunities. Take for example our extraordinarily successful financial… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12323,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Mason-Tisa-040A6662.jpg?fit=750%2C1050&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61594,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61593\/revisions\/61594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}