1. Bringing a financial wellness program to your campus
2018 ILASFAA Annual Conference: Celebrating the superhero in all of us!

2. Learning Objectives
Ability to formulate a plan for launching a financial wellness program at your institution
Identify the pros & cons of having your financial wellness program housed within your Financial Aid Department
Identify the different avenues that your Institution can utilize for financial wellness outreach
Notes: Discuss Financial Literacy Task Force and the purpose/main objectives behind creating it. Financial Literacy Coordinator started in April 2015 and programming started in August 2015.
Notes: Once your institution decides to start a financial wellness program, the person in charge of that program should meet with faculty and staff across campus to learn what their main concern is regarding students and finances. It is also important to hear what type of outreach methods have and have not been successful for your colleagues.

3. Pros & cons of housing your financial wellness program within financial aid
Having a professional who has experience with student loans
Cons:
Making a clear distinction between “financial wellness” and “financial aid”
Conflict of Interest concerns
Note: We have been able to incorporate smart borrowing habits into a lot of our financial wellness discussions trying to curb the disadvantages that can arise from having the program in Financial Aid. This is still an ongoing issue that we deal with this day.

4. Top 6 successful financial wellness outreach methods at siu
Our financial wellness program performs many different types of outreach but there are definitely those that have a larger impact than others.

5. Workshops
University 101 Presentations
Personal Finance Course
Loan Indebtedness Letters
Financial Coaching
Online Resources
Note: Some of our online resources were already in place with the Financial Literacy Coordinator was hired. Workshops were one of the first initiatives that our financial wellness office worked on. As we will discuss in a little bit, workshops have not always been successful for peer programs but ours has really taken off. We sent our first batch of loan indebtedness letters in October 2015 and have been able to improve the process significantly since then. Our personal finance course was put into effect in Spring 2015 and has been going strong ever since. This past fall we started University 101 Presentations and financial coaching. These two initiatives can really be tied together as we will discuss as well.

6. Online resources iGrad:
Award-winning online financial literacy platform, which offers best-in-class material to colleges & universities nationwide.
Available on-demand to students & their families as well as institutional faculty and staff
Saluki Cents Website:
We have created a website with additional resources available to our students: fao.siu.edu/saluki-cents
Note: We utilize Single Sign On for iGrad
Discussion Point: Why we chose to go with iGrad over the other platforms that are available
(If you have time, sign into iGrad so that attendees can have a visual of how the platform is set up. You can point out different factors that we really liked about iGrad.)

7. workshops
One hour long interactive sessions focused on an array of financial topics
6 workshops are offered each fall
and spring semester
- $1,000 Scholarship Incentive
- Free food and drinks
Note:
We try to make our titles enticing for students (e.g. Eating Healthy on a Budget, Are you Financially Fit, Saluki Cents Money Boot Camp). Many institutions have not had luck with stand alone workshops but as our numbers show, this is a form of outreach is very successful at SIU.
If your institution has a student PR program, utilize them for marketing. Student to student marketing is HUGE. We have found that the following help in boosting attendance:
Faculty-Buy In (extra credit)
Tabling the afternoon of each event (examples of how we table: candy & other giveaways, prize wheel)
Social Media Pushes (We utilize Twitter)
Flyers across campus

8. Loan indebtedness letters
Goal: Indirectly influence students to be proactive in regard to smart borrowing
We include:
- Total federal loan borrowing as of their last FAFSA on file
Year Repayment Plan Example
- Career Interest Section
- Links to academic & financial credentials
Mailed out in March – ideally right before financial aid award letters are sent out
-SIU started mailing loan indebtedness letters in fall 2015.
-While it is too soon to measure results, we have seen a decrease in our borrowing by over $1,000 from 2016 to 2017
-Career Interests Section: We pull the degree that the student has on file with the University and provide a website recommended through Career Services, which will show them what to expect in a starting salary in their field. General Rule of Thumb: you should not borrow more than your expected first year’s salary

9. Personal finance course
The objective of this course is to survey various areas of personal finance. Topics covered include setting financial goals, money management, credit, student loans, understanding the Bursar bill, investing & taxes. After this course, students should be able to:
Set financial goals & create/implement a realistic budget
Undestand the fundamentals of banking and credit
Understand the financial aid process, student bills, and the different costs of living associated to being a college student
Ability to use quantitive reasoning to develop critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills
Notes: This course is a 2-credit hour general elective that is open to all undergraduate students. It is offered both on-campus & online.
There was a lot of research conducted to determine how basic or advanced this course should be. Two key factors that we took into consideration are our first generation population and campus diversity. After our research, we decided to have our course focus on the basic foundations of personal finance.

10. University 101 Presentation
Broad Overview:
Student Loans
Scholarships
Budgets
Credit
Saluki Cents Office Information
Popular topics amongst our students
Notes: University 101 is a required course for SIU students. This presentation gives us the opportunity to come into contact with majority of our undergraduate students.

11. Financial Coaching
Individual appointments with students concerning any personal finance topic
Typically lasts 30 – 45 minutes
We typically have 5 – 10 students/month with this type of outreach
Note: Financial Coaching is a great way to create that one-on-one relationship with the student. This is a new outreach method for SIU this year but we are receiving positive feedback from our students. As we continue to come into contact with each student through University 101, we anticipate our average number of students requesting individual appointments to continue to grow as our workshops have.

12. Questions?