Press Releases

For Immediate Release
August 04, 2009	Contact: Charles Evenson 608-266-2026

DFI’s National Institute to Give Educators Close-Up View of Chicago Financial District

UW-Milwaukee Economist and WBCA “Man of the Year” Timothy O’Driscoll to Keynote Institute Closing Luncheon

(Madison) Nearly 50 educators attending DFI’s National Institute of Financial and Economic Literacy (NIFEL) will see firsthand the workings of the American financial system by touring Chicago’s financial district. The group will visit the Chicago Board of Trade to see the trading pit in action and then stop at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. A highlight of the Chicago Fed visit will be a briefing from Jyl Dupont, Consumer Financial Services Analyst, Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. She will inform the group about resources available for educators across the country.

The August 6th trip is part of a weeklong session that shows educators how to teach their students about personal finance. Edgewood College of Madison will host the August 3-7 program.

The course, called Credit and Money, helps educators learn about socially responsible consumption; budgeting and credit; and money, inflation and how the Federal Reserve System controls inflation. Professor Bill Duddleston, Edgewood College, serves as its academic advisor.

Timothy O’Driscoll, Director of the Center for Economic Education, UW-Milwaukee, will keynote the program’s closing ceremony and luncheon. Mr. O’Driscoll, also a high school baseball coach, has won the most games of any coach in Wisconsin high school history (738). The Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association (WBCA) earlier this year named him as its 2009 “Man of the Year.” In addition, Mr. O’Driscoll serves as Major League Baseball’s official scorer for Milwaukee Brewer home games.

The NIFEL, now in its ninth year, has been designated “a best practice for teacher training” by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It is the only three-session, graduate-level program of its kind in the country. According to an independent survey, NIFEL attendees reached about 55,000 Wisconsin students the past academic year alone. It draws attendees from around the country though the majority of its attendees are Wisconsin educators.

DFI’s Office of Financial Literacy (OFL) takes the lead role in producing the NIFEL. Because of its efforts in creating it and other programs, Harvard University, earlier this year, named the OFL as one of its “Top 50 Innovations in Government” for 2009.

For more information about the NIFEL, contact David Mancl, Director of DFI’s Office of Financial Literacy, at 608-261-9540 or email him at david.mancl@dfi.state.wi.us.