At the center of campus lies the answer for students asking themselves, “How do I adult?”

The Penn State Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center, located in 11A Grange Building, is committed to equipping Penn State students with the ability to make sound financial decisions. This resource provides students with access to information regarding budgeting, student loans, debt, saving, and investing.

There are 24 self-study modules on the Financial and Life Skills Center website, which you can access here. You can even find nifty tools like budget calculators and a financial literacy test.

Originally created in July of 2017 and branded as the Financial Literacy and Wellness Center, the center was endowed and underwent a name change to pay tribute to the generosity of the donor. 

The Financial and Life Skills Center also offers a variety of ways for students and staff to meet with experts in person. You can submit a request for a guest speaker for a webinar, presentation, freshman seminar class, and so on. Individuals can also request meetings with a professional at the center or a student ambassador.

Daad Rizk serves as the director of the center. Rizk is a Georgia Southern University alumna — she earned undergraduate degrees in economics and business administration, as well as an MBA in business and a Doctorate of Education in curriculum studies and foundations. She’s heavily involved in the university and has received a plethora of awards, including the Institute for Financial Literacy’s 2017 Excellence in Financial Literacy Education, Educator of the Year Award.

As director, Rizk has worked extensively to create learning opportunities for those on campus, most of which have students in mind.

“Most of our program and services are focused on students, but we do offer these services to staff and faculty as needed,” Rizk said. “Fall semester 2018, we delivered 135 class sessions reaching over 3,200 students. We conducted 93 hours of personal meetings with students and 27 hours of personal meetings with staff and faculty combined.”

Rizk said that since most states don’t require financial literacy courses in high school, many students lack the proper knowledge to take care of their finances when college comes around. 

“Personal finance is no longer an intuitive knowledge as it might had been in the past,” Rizk said. “Nowadays, economic choices are more complicated and convoluted, which requires students to learn how to maneuver through the chaos to make financial decisions based on the quality of available information and data.”

Rizk believes that students at Penn State have shown impressive abilities in understanding the complexities of financial management, and that the students who believe they are lacking knowledge have done a great job to seek assistance.

The Financial and Life Skills Center is currently working to strengthen the programs it offers and is putting together plans to expand to Penn State’s commonwealth campuses.