Every fall on campuses across the country, a new crop of students experiences the exhilaration of being on their own, often for the first time in their lives. Right off the bat, they encounter a battery of information tables loaded with free stuff. Some of those freebies come with expensive strings, as Gilbert Rogers learned the hard way.
Rogers is an expert on personal finance now, but as a first-generation, first-year student at Western Kentucky University, he was an easy mark for banks handing out T-shirts. "All you had to do was sign up for a credit card," he says. "Pretty soon I am walking around campus with four or five shirts, not thinking about what it will mean when all these credit cards arrive in the mail."
As director of the University of Oregon's new Financial Wellness Center, Rogers is developing the student financial literacy program he wishes had existed when he naively collected those "free" shirts. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, from working in the US Army's financial counseling program at Fort Knox to launching a financial literacy program at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he quickly became known as a rising star in the financial wellness world.
"Students are investing both their time and energy to attain their degrees," says Rogers, whose doctoral dissertation analyzed the need for financial literacy programs. "As they take on more and more debt, universities need to help them make an easier transition to the real world after graduation. The Financial Wellness Center enables the investment in their education to start paying off much earlier in life."
Rogers says what made it worthwhile for him to move his family from Oklahoma to Oregon during a pandemic is the vision for a culture of financial wellness at the UO, a vision made possible by a gift from Nancy and Dave Petrone, BS '66 (economics), MBA '68 (business environment).
"We are reaching students by getting into the spaces where they are, explaining how financial literacy will help them all their lives," Rogers says. "The support from the Petrones allows us to do this the right way."
In contrast to schools that offer only a simple website with tips and tricks for managing money, the UO center provides peer financial coaches, delivers workshops to student and campus organizations, and taps into faculty and alumni expertise in tax planning, investing, and even car buying. The center, a joint project of the Lundquist College of Business and the Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships, expands on its predecessor, Financial Flight Plan.
