Questrom Hosts Second Financial Inclusion Symposium with Bunker Hill Community College
On Monday, March 13th, undergraduate Business and Management majors from Bunker Hill Community College, our Associate Campus Partner, visited BU for a joint symposium on the topic of Financial Inclusion. The Symposium was organized by BU HHHP Assistant Director Cyrus Konstantinakos and Program Manager Jelena Durkovic and was moderated by HHHP Director and Associate Professor Jack McCarthy.
The Associate Campus Partnership (ACP) was established in 2007 with the aim of promoting alliances between Humphrey host universities and colleges with student populations that may not have opportunities to interact with international visitors such as Humphrey Fellows. Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) is a two-year community college that provides higher education and job training services to 14,000 students in the Boston area. The student population is nearly 70% minority and over 50% female; it is one of the most diverse colleges in the region.
In the past, BHCC and the BU HHHP have undertaken various joint initiatives such as essay contests and dramatic productions on personal financial planning, a photo-essay project with students of the Community College Initiative (another State Department-led exchange program that invites college graduates from selected countries to spend a year in the U.S., hosted by BHCC), and in 2015–2016, a first-ever research report of articles written by Humphrey Fellows and BHCC faculty on the topic of financial inclusion.
This year, we organized a special joint symposium in a round robin format in order to support robust participation among all the attendees and enable more intimate conversations than has ever been possible using traditional symposium formats. BHCC Business and Management majors in classes taught by BHCC Professor Wissal Nouchrif, and others who came to us through BHCC’s Single Stop program led by Director Kathleen O’Neill, joined a handful of Questrom students and Humphrey Fellows in small group discussions that flowed across a wide range of topics—from from personal experiences to national, regional, and global issues and initiatives.
Financial inclusion is indeed a topic of paramount importance to both community college students and Humphrey Fellows at BU, who specialize in banking, finance, education, and public policy. The symposium was a great success, and it has become a signature event of our longstanding and close relationship with Bunker Hill Community College.