A.B. Freeman School of Business Fine 4890: Financial Literacy

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1 A.B. Freeman School of Business Fine 4890: Financial Literacy Professor Desman Office: GWHI Phone: (504) Teaching assistant: Angelina May (504) Day and Time Room Tuesday 3:30 GW Office Hours: By appointment Pre-requisites: FINE 3010; senior standing. Co-requisite: FINE FINE 4890 is a service learning component of FINE A Finance student cannot enroll in Fine 4890 unless they are enrolled in FINE Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you re alive, it isn t. - Richard Bach COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES Overview This public service lab is a one credit hour service-learning integrated with FINE In it, finance students will research, prepare, and teach core elements of financial literacy to students who live in the New Orleans community, and range in age from Kindergarten to Adults. Financial literacy is clearly important to the smooth functioning of a market economy such as our own. To participate constructively in our community, people must understand how to keep track of their money-earning and spending, how to interact with banks and other financial institutions, how to establish and manage consumer credit such as credit cards, auto loans, and home mortgages, and how to make basic investment decisions. A lack of financial literacy is socially costly. At least some of the credit bubble that burst into the financial crisis was rooted in consumers taking out loans they did not understand and could not afford. Recognizing the importance of extending financial literacy more universally, the state of Louisiana enacted SB38/Act 296, which mandates that all public school students from middle through high school should pass required course work in financial literacy. Unfortunately, very few schools have been able to implement programs addressing SB38 owing to shortages of qualified instructors. Through the Center of Public Service (CPS) and the Freeman School s finance area, business school students trained in finance will help fulfill this mandate in schools in and around the New Orleans metropolitan area. In addition to practicing the "Art of Teaching" throughout New Orleans we will also be working on a feasibility study to transition some of the teaching hours of Financial Literacy into a community outreach program/clinic and to uncover its viability in the city of New Orleans. Course Objectives The objective of this course is to train business school students majoring in finance to effectively research and build lesson plans and teach core elements of financial literacy to students, who

2 range in age from kindergarten through adulthood. Ultimately, the goal is to enable students to make more sound choices in their personal finances, and also help the finance Student see another view of the local community in New Orleans outside of their Tulane View. This lab will serve as a bridge between the corporate finance curriculum we emphasize at the university level and personal finance learning objectives associated with basic financial literacy. The following table relates topics covered in FINE 4100 with elements of the personal finance curriculum: Corporate Finance Topic Capital budgeting, analysis, and planning Corporate risk management and working capital management Corporate valuation Personal Financial Literacy Objectives Plan for and manage personal and business finances Use money management strategies Explore the financial aspects of career planning Understand laws that pertain to business and personal finance Invest in Real Estate Manage personal banking accounts Safeguard personal credit Navigate financing for a first home Invest for the future Understand the importance of tax strategies Purchase and understand home and automobile insurance Understand Health, Disability, and Life Insurance Understand stocks and the stock market Understand bonds and mutual funds To accomplish these teaching objectives, the business school students will be assigned into teams (to be determined by enrollment) and given the fundamental tools necessary to teach financial literacy to an age appropriate audience; each team will work as a group and instruct a class of students. 1. Some of the essential tools will include: a. Creating lesson plans that include enough material for a paced learning in the classroom - each lesson plan will be an individual effort not a team effort b. Mock teaching during the labs to practice and develop a personal teaching style c. Review concepts in Financial literacy and adapt them to the appropriate learning age groups d. Create a feasibility study and tools necessary to implement a community outreach program in Financial literacy 2

3 The Freeman School students will become engaged and provide service to the community with measurable outcomes such as but not limited to: completion of hours; reflection assignments; a feasibility study and/or completion of a final project related to their service learning partnership. Each finance student will be required to spend at least forty hours in community service that begins with an onsite orientation with the community partner and will include: 1. Preparation of teaching materials and a completed lesson plan for the lab topics assigned to you by your community partner or Professor Desman, along with a clear plan that you and your community partner agree upon during orientation; 2. The learning lab will meet (10 60 minutes a week) Tuesdays at 3:30 3. Classroom experiential teaching (12 hours for the semester) which may include 8 hours doing volunteer work with Junior Achievement, and additional hours in an actual classroom environment at Upward Bound or yet to be determined community partner; 4. Verbal reflection of teaching experience along with impromptu in class teaching practice; 5. The feasibility study broken into parts such as Executive Summary, Benefits, how do we create a program that makes sense given constraints, recommendations, and a conclusion and summary of findings. Please note: travel time to and from your service learning assignment is not counted towards your time commitment. Community Partner One of the community partners will be Upward Bound. Upward Bound s mission is to help under-funded students (K-12) receive educational resolve to enroll, attend and graduate from colleges and universities. Financial literacy is especially significant for this audience, not least because of the importance of student loans in funding higher education. Another community partner will be Junior Achievement (JA). JA uses the National Endowment for Financial Education curriculum (Nefe) in conjunction with Literacy Park as a capstone to the material taught throughout the semester. Some of the High Schools affiliated with the JA program in the metropolitan area include: Warren Easton, Washington High School, and Thurgood Marshall. (Please note that due to scheduling conflicts these are examples and change from semester to semester and are merely examples from previous semesters.) In addition to the specific community partners listed above there are other community partners that will be involved in our teaching experiences such as Café Reconcile. These partners will generally be with young adults or senior citizens who will bring to our classroom experience a creative demonstration of the community service ideology. What the Community Will Receive The local students who benefit from this education will hopefully broaden their horizons to make more educated choices about proper usage of credit cards and consumer debt, understand how their own credit ratings are determined, begin a savings plan for future purchases such as a first car or first home. Present history shows us that financially illiterate individuals can cause 3

4 significant economic problems for larger communities. Educating a student in the city of New Orleans will ideally yield a more educated, sophisticated, and fiscally responsible citizen. Required Readings No textbook is required for this course. Students will use the same textbook that is used in FINE 4100 or ENRG Specific websites will be used by the students to generate information for their lesson plans. The current standards for financial literacy education are the following URLs: under Social Studies - Free Enterprise Additional materials will also be available on Blackboard or may be given to you verbally which will require you to be responsible to take notes. COURSE OUTLINE WEEK DATE MATERIAL 1 1/29 Course Overview 2 2/5 How to create a lesson plan The Financial Plan 3 2/19 Ice breaker - Creating a budget Reflection assignment 4 2/26 How to save for College, first home, etc Loans and amortization tables 5 3/5 Introduction of Feasibility Study 6 3/12 Credit and your credit scores Using Credit Wisely Feasibility Study 7 3/19 Keeping your money secure - Check book and Savings Account Feasibility Study 8 4/2 Insurance Feasibility Study 9 4/9 Feasibility Study 10 4/16 Feasibility Study Completed and Due COURSE POLICIES Class Attendance Because this course relies upon participation, and is only sixty minutes in length, you must arrive on time, prepared, and ready to participate. If, for any reason, you miss more than two classes, you will lose a letter grade on your final class grade, and continue losing a letter for each class missed after the third absence. Adaptive learning/teaching environment Financial Literacy is a different learning environment than many other courses you have taken at Tulane. In most of your classrooms structure remains a constant throughout the semester. Given the wide range of community partners and level of students who will be our partners you must 4

5 remain resourceful and willing to change without much notice, much like behavior that is expected of you in the work environment. Assignments, Presentations and Reflections 1. Orientation Each team will be required the week before they begin actual teaching to attend an orientation with their community partner. At that time you will review what classroom teaching materials are available to you on site along with supplying your teaching partner with contact information, come to some agreement about the dates you will teach, and also what and how the curriculum should be taught. Likewise you should obtain from them their contact information so that as the semester progresses both your team and the partner can stay in direct contact. Your first assignment will be to take notes during this meeting and bring a recapitulation due after your orientation. Schedule for turning in assignments and reflections - TBD Due Date Assignment Team Name, teaching times and assignments Orientation meeting notes - Challenges Observe Teaching environment A personal Teaching Reflection Part One of Feasibility study Part Two of Feasibility study Part Three of Feasibility study Edited final version of Feasibility study 2. Reflection -The first part of class will be reserved for verbal reflection. We will use this time as an open forum to discuss our progress. Each week we will have a specific topic to reflect on. You will receive a prompt when class begins and have some time to gather your thoughts and reflect on your position. You will also be asked to write a personal reflection about your teaching experience. The written reflection is an opportunity for you to think critically about your teaching skills, what perceived challenges were there or not, how your expectations varied from the actual teaching experience. It is not a place for complaining about your teaching situation. If you have some issues in your classroom experience please come and see me in my office or contact the teaching assistant Angelina May to get that cleared up immediately. Please follow the verbal prompts given to you for individual written reflection when assigned. 3. Feasibility Study Each student will create his or her own feasibility study determining whether or not it is practical to create a financial literacy clinic where individuals from the community can rely upon you to give them credible financial advice on things like: Challenges of finding gainful employment How to intelligently keep track of earnings 5

6 How to use a bank while preserving their earnings Managing Consumer Credit judiciously The Pros and Cons of Auto purchases new or used and loan responsibilities How to save for a first home and untangling mortgage jargon from financial institutions Basic investment decisions but no stock advice due to liability issues To complete the requirements of service learning, finance students will attend schools in and around metropolitan New Orleans as a group to teach the assigned class of that week s topic in financial literacy. During these meetings, finance students will develop and execute a lesson plan for their community partner. In addition to attending the faculty guided classes and completing the assignments, presentations, and reflections students must meet the following requirements to receive a satisfactory grade for the service learning option: Maintain a relationship in good standing with the community partner (finance students will conduct themselves in a professional, responsible manner when dealing with the community partner) and receive a satisfactory evaluation of performance from the partner. Complete tbd hours of community service hours with a completed log signed by the community partner do not include travel time Complete a mid-semester and end of semester evaluation provided by the Center for Public Service Composition of Course Grade Meetings, performance evaluations from community partner, and mid-semester and end of semester evaluations for the Center for Public Service 20% Team work 20% Teaching preparation & delivery of materials 20% Reflection 10% Feasibility Study 30% Several factors play a role in computing your final grade. They include class participation, attendance, reflection, good citizenship practices and behavior. When you receive your final grade, be aware that is not just scores on assignments that produce the final grade. Grading Scale Grade A A- B+ B B- C+ C C- D+ D D- F Points or less 6

7 Statement about Academic Integrity This class will be conducted in full accordance with Tulane s policies about academic integrity including, but not limited to, the Code of Academic Integrity and the Code of Student Conduct. These can be found at: and Freeman Educational Norms and Expectations This class will be conducted in full accordance with Freeman s Educational Norms and Expectations. Please reread the Norms and Expectations, which can be found at Tulane Public Safety Information Learning Disabilities Under the Americans with Disability Act and the Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, if you have a disability, you may have the right to an accommodation; however, the right is contingent upon you taking certain steps. You should review the steps that you need to take, as well as Tulane s policy concerning accommodations at Any student with a disability, in need of course or examination accommodation, should request an accommodation through the University s Office of Disability Services (ODS) located in the Mechanical Engineering Building. At the beginning of the semester, please provide me with a copy of your approved ODS accommodation form. I am committed to working with ODS to ensure that I provide you with all approved accommodations. If you do not deliver the approved accommodation form to me, I will not know that ODS approved your accommodation and I will have no basis to provide those accommodations. A word about E- mail In the electronic age that we live in, it is simple to send an to someone by quickly firing off a question, remark or argument. With so many students it is impossible for me to manage that many issues by . So if you have something you need help with by all means me with your name, section, and time of class so that I can place you in your classroom environment. Use your best communication skills to explain to me what the question/problem is you are concerned about. I reserve the right to not answer any s that do not meet these specifications, and also will try to help those who do. I try to respond to all issues within twentyfour hours. A word about Cell Phones We need to keep our cell phones on vibrate in case of an emergency and need to receive information from the University. Please use extreme courteousness during community service teaching/meetings and keep your cell phone off. Be a good example to the students you will be mentoring and leave your cell phones for later. 7