The Ron Blue Institute for Financial Planning, a wholly owned subsidiary of Indiana Wesleyan University, is preparing for the grand opening of the NEXUS Financial Discipleship Center at IWU. Opening in Fall 2016, the Center will be a discipleship ministry of trained student coaches established to help students and the community with financial discipleship.
The first cohort of peer coaches was recently hired and has already begun training. The four coaches will have three primary responsibilities: leading one-on-one student coaching sessions, giving group presentations on campus and conducting research to further their knowledge database. Coaches will be well versed in a variety of topics, including financial goal development, budgeting, credit, investing, managing debt, and student loan planning and repayments.
“It’s really about students making healthy financial decisions,” said Dr. Justin Henegar, the Director of Research and Scholarship for the Ron Blue Institute for Financial Planning at IWU. “We want to provide them with tools, help them understand the effects of financial decisions and then hold them accountable to those decisions.”
In the future, NEXUS has plans to expand beyond the IWU residential campus. Peer coaches hope to meet with people in the Marion community as well as video chat with IWU students who attend classes online in order to give people access to financial information who might not otherwise have it.
“We connect principles to people,” said Henegar. “That’s really what it’s all about.”
Click here to learn more about The Ron Blue Institute for Financial Planning.