Schiffer Family Financial Literacy Program expands beyond Rutgers

Two new initiatives have expanded the ability of the Schiffer Family Literacy Program at Rutgers Business School to make students across New Jersey more financially savvy.

One initiative focuses on developing and implementing a financial literacy workshop for high school teachers. Twenty-eight educators attended an inaugural workshop on May 20.

The second initiative created opportunities for 11 Rutgers Business School students to work alongside high school teachers during the past academic year to teach financial literacy. The Rutgers students developed and delivered lesson plans on such topics as budgeting, investing, taxes and behavioral economics.

The initiatives are the first major changes to a seven-year-old financial literacy program that was established to teach financial literacy to Rutgers Business School students through a gift from Rutgers MBA alumnus Edwin Schiffer, who completed his Rutgers MBA in 1969.

“Financial literacy is always important as people prepare for their futures,” said Ron Richter, a professor of finance who helped to launch the program and carry out its expansion. “These two initiatives help us to increase our outreach of promulgating that knowledge,” he said. 

To carry out the new initiatives, Richter partnered with Luke Greeley, associate dean of Rutgers Business School’s undergraduate program in Newark who did a dissertation on financial literacy and worked with Richter in the past. 

“His knowledge of financial literacy was extremely helpful in creating ideas to increase our outreach,” Richter said.

Greeley is passionate about the importance of financial literacy. "Public education has an incredible responsibility to level the playing field and democratize sound financial literacy," he said, "and the Schiffer program is going a long way to support those efforts.”

Since Schiffer made his gift in 2019, Rutgers Business School has offered financial literacy as part of the Conquering Your Transition, a professional development course for students as they near graduation. Thousands of Rutgers Business School students in both New Brunswick and Newark have taken the program. The course curriculum includes active learning strategies, such as having the students budget their expected living expenses and savings goals against their expected salary after college.

Richter said his conversations with Schiffer consistently focus on the program’s ultimate goal: Changing student behaviors in ways that improve their long-term financial well-being. A year ago, Schiffer said he would give additional funding if new initiatives could be developed to expand financial literacy across New Jersey.

The new teacher workshop accomplished that. It encouraged teachers to share their successes and challenges in delivering financial literacy curriculum. They were also asked to bring examples of lessons. One teacher described the workshop as “very insightful and inspiring.” Another thanked Richter and Greeley for “an amazingly beneficial workshop.”

Greeley emphasized the value of having college students in high school classrooms, which occurred as part of the new initiative. “College students can often relate more directly to high school students and provide perspectives that complement those of classroom teachers,” he said, “learning is in-part social, and hearing good ideas and strategies from near-peers can be extremely effective.”