2016-17 in Review

Thank you to all our partners and supporters for a successful school year! We are excited to share with you the many milestones that our program achieved in 2016-17, as well as our plans for the upcoming school year.

10,000 students and counting...

Our program hit record heights this school year, as we officially reached our 10,000th student! In all, we served 62 schools, 88 teachers, and 3,700 students during the 2016-17 school year--our most to date.

New professional learning course 

We are pleased to debut one of our first major new products: an online professional learning course for financial literacy teachers. The course offers five modules on key financial content. Each module is designed to draw on teachers’ pre-existing knowledge and experience with finance, and to build teachers’ confidence in the content. The course was beta-tested by a small group of teachers in the spring and will be offered to all Magnetar Academy teachers in the fall of 2017. Check out the modules offered here.

Website launch  

The Magnetar Capital UChicago Financial Education Initiative website has a new look. In early April,we unveiled a new project website at https://financialeducation.uchicago.edu/. The website was created to streamline information for students, teachers, parents, and the public, as well as to recognize the long-term partnership between Magnetar Capital and UChicago STEM Education to improve financial education nationwide.

Research and development progress

Our team is also in the progress of developing a new research-based financial literacy curriculum for high school teachers and students. This past year was devoted to research and development, during which the team drafted and commissioned white papers, field tested new product offerings, connected with leading financial literacy experts, and heard from teachers about what works best in the classroom. We also spent the year incorporating feedback from teachers and testing improvements to the existing curriculum. Keep an eye out for our new findings coming your way soon!

Looking forward

The 2017-18 school year will be a busy one for the team, as we look to turn our research and development findings into a brand-new, first-of-its-kind curriculum. We will also be expanding our in-person professional development offerings to two days, making improvements to the current curriculum, sharing our learnings at financial literacy conferences, and more. If you are interested in learning more about our work or partnership opportunities, please email charugupta@uchicago.edu.  

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