ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997 TAG: 9704140118
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL THE ROANOKE TIMES
IF YOU'VE never heard of the consumer studies program at Virginia Tech, it doesn't mean you're out of the loop.
Ditto for the university's family financial management program.
The majors, part of Tech's department of housing, interior design and resource management, have been well-kept secrets for years. Even most Tech students don't know they exist.
It's not because the professors and students wandering around Wallace Hall aren't proud of what they do.
"We've got something pretty good over here," said Tom Garman, who teaches several consumer studies courses.
But when early retirement and a hiring freeze left the department with a shortage of faculty members, it was not the best time to advertise for more students.
All that is changing. Thanks to the recent hiring of a full-time professor and two part-time faculty members, the two programs are up to five staff members, and they're ready to start letting the word out.
Many of the 60 students in Tech's consumer studies and family financial management programs came to their majors by accident.
Eric Johnsen, a family financial management graduate student, started out in the business school. He was planning to study for his MBA when he discovered the FFM program.
"That was what I'd been looking for in four years as an undergrad," he said.
He liked the focus on real-world problems and on actual people. In the business school, he said, he had learned only about corporations and solving complex financial equations.
Jenny May was about ready to graduate with a psychology degree when she took a consumer studies class. She decided to continue her coursework and now is a senior consumer studies/psychology double major.
Tim DiVito started out in architecture. Sara Wood was in psychology.
"We have a lot of transfers," said Bruce Brunson, who this semester is teaching a class in debtor-creditor relations and another in advanced family financial planning.
They also get quite a few students from other departments, who want to take a class or two dealing with real-life issues.
"This class not only prepares students to work with other people,
but it prepares them for life," said Marlene Fitzgerald, an agricultural economics major taking the class in debtor-creditor relationships.
This is the place where students learn how to compare the value of credit-card offers, based on interest rates, payment schedules and finance charges.
They learn to read the fine print on loan applications.
They learn to prepare budgets. Students in one of the financial-management classes must keep daily expense logs, then estimate their future expenses. "This is where the people who smoke find out how much it costs them," Brunson said. "We seem to have a lot of beer expenses in here."
In a class called "consumer rights," students study product safety, insurance, history of the consumer movement, capitalism and economics, investments and health.
Students in the family financial management program learn to use financial calculators and spreadsheets. By the time they graduate, FFM students must be able to lay out an entire financial plan for a hypothetical client: define the person's financial goals, choose insurance policies, draw up wills and contracts, plan for retirement and children's education, make investments and file taxes.
True to Tech's stated goal as a career-oriented school, students in the HIDM programs also learn to sell themselves. A class called "Professionalism in consumer affairs" includes segments on public speaking, business ethics and self-promotion. Students also are required to complete at least one internship as an undergraduate.
But perhaps most important, they learn empathy. In one of Brunson's classes, students divide into groups to study the financial lifecycles of sample families in different income brackets. They have been surprised by what they've discovered, Brunson said, especially when they analyze the finances of low-income case studies and discover how much such people must do without.
"Many students don't understand what low-income really is," said Irene Leech, who teaches a financial counseling class and also is president of the Virginia Citizens Consumer Council. Her course, she said, trains students to help clients become self-sufficient consumers. "A lot of people live on less than $30,000 a year, which they [the students] just cannot imagine."
|--| The consumer studies program emerged on Tech's campus some 20 years ago, during the heyday of consumer advocacy in America. Ralph Nader was a household name and the concept of total quality management was hot in the business world. Companies were eager to hire employees who were customer driven, rather than focusing solely on sales, Garman said.
It was in such an atmosphere that the program flourished. Over the years, it matured from a generalist major that required students to take classes in nutrition, chemistry and clothing to the focused, job-oriented track that today's students follow.
The course hasn't been without its hurdles. Earlier this decade, the program was severely understaffed after cuts were made to the state's consumer budget. One professor retired, two others left and hiring was frozen.
"We were kind of limping along for a while," Garman said.
But with Brunson recently joining full-time professors Garman and Ruth Lytton, and with extension specialists Leech and Constance Kratzer coming on part time, the program is ready to start expanding again.
"You may not see Ralph Nader out there picketing," Garman said, "but the consumer movement is alive and well." This time, he said, the growth is on the grass roots level. Citizens increasingly are seeing themselves as consumers and are demanding better service and better quality. And businesses, he said, are responding by hiring employees with experience in consumer affairs.
Real growth is expected within the family financial management track, he said, with the number of students expected to double within three to four years. The university has been very supportive of the program, he said. By the time classes resume after summer break, a new computer lab will be finished. The FFM program also is on track to meet registration requirements of the Certified Financial Planners Board.
The big challenge now is letting people know that these programs, nestled within the huge HIDM department, exist.
Undergraduate Rebecca Smith has found that she has to explain her major to most prospective employers, because they've never heard of it. And consumer studies/FFM students often miss out on visits by recruiters, DiVito said, because employers looking for financial planners visit the business school instead.
The battle for recognition isn't unique to Tech. Garman estimated that fewer than 50 degree-granting programs exist at U.S. colleges and universities.
One is at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Through its consumer and family economics department - whose roots go back to the 1930s - the school today offers undergraduate majors in consumer affairs and personal financial management services, plus masters degrees and doctorates.
The program's enrollment has waxed and waned over the years and currently stands at about 155, said department chairman Ed Metzen.
"Our kind of program is not easily found, for some reason," he said. "Everybody knows there's a history department or a chemistry department on campus. But you get away from those basics and into a program like ours - we have to keep fighting."
Missouri has been battling its visibility problem in part by recruiting consumer and business leaders to serve on an advisory board. Such connections provide both networking opportunities for students and credibility for the program as a whole.
And as graduates start getting jobs, he said, recruiters learn more about the program and hire more graduates.
"It's a momentum-building kind of thing," Metzen said.
|--| Few of the students aspire to be the next Ralph Nader.
That's probably just as well, Garman said, because there just aren't many employers out there looking for controversial activists.
But there are plenty of other places where graduates with well-developed consumer skills are in demand.
Cristin Campbell, a grad student, is thinking about a career in Extension. DiVito, and most of the FFM students, want to go into financial management. Matt Sloan recently was hired as an intern by Monsour Financial Group in Roanoke.
Andrew Monsour said he interviewed 11 students at Tech, most from the business school. He knew nothing about the FFM or consumer studies programs but said he was impressed by Sloan's knowledge of financial planning. The internship may, Monsour said, turn into a full-time job.
Tech "is preparing them very well," he said.
Jenny May has considered jobs with the Better Business Bureau, or in the consumer affairs department of a large corporation, or maybe in financial planning.
"It seems like everybody wants to do something different," she said.
Recent graduates have ended up in mortgage finance in Baltimore, bank management in Richmond, special events coordination in Florida, insurance claims in Texas and retail store management in Northern Virginia.
In other words, Garman said, in any line of work where a business or an agency needs employees who are people-centered.
Think about the old movie "Miracle on 34th Street," he said. Central to the plot is a Macy's Santa Claus who, when children ask for toys that Macy's doesn't carry, tells their parents to try Gimble's, a competitor. Those are the kind of employees that Tech wants to train, Garman said.
"Our people, we would hope, would be the ones who would say, 'You need to go to Kmart for that,'" he said.
Even if they decide not to go into financial or consumer-related fields, Brunson said, the students will be well-prepared for life as consumers, thanks to their Tech coursework.
"Parents would love for them to know this," he said. "How many other majors can you say that about?"
LENGTH: Long : 184 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. Bruce Brunson discusses aby CNBproject with students in his "Debtor-Creditor Relationships" class.
The class deals with real-life issues, such as how to compare the
value of credit-card offers, based on interest rates, payment
schedules and finance charges. They also learn to read the fine
print on loan applications. 2. Eric Johnsen, a family financial
management graduate student, started out in the business school. He
was planning to study for his MBA when he discovered the FFM
program. He likes the program's focus on real-world problems and on
actual people. color. 3. Christin Campbell is a team leader in Bruce
Brunson's "Debtor-Creditor Relationships" class at Virginia Tech.