This summer, UVU’s PFP program—in partnership with the Charles Schwab Foundation—hosted its first Financial Planning Academy. Eighteen high school students from various schools in Utah—and one from Arizona—took part in the camp. Participating high schools included Orem, Timpanogos, Mountain View, and Skyridge in Lehi, as well as Utah County Academy of Sciences, Itineris Early College High School, American Preparatory Academy, and Karl G Maeser Preparatory Academy. There was an even mix of senior, junior, and sophomore students.

The week-long finance camp involved splitting the students into four teams to compete in a financial planning competition, and each member of the winning team received $500. The competition consisted of creating a financial firm—built from Legos, preparing a financial plan for a fictional client, developing an app to connect with customers, marketing their company through social media, and playing in some field sport activities. Each team was assigned a current UVU PFP student who served as a camp counselor. At the end of the week, the students presented their finished companies in an exhibition hall, as well as before a panel of judges. The campers also participated in an etiquette lunch, laser tag, bowling, and races with iDrive.

“We’ve always wanted to run a high school financial camp to attract students to this great profession and major at UVU,” said Luke Dean, PFP faculty and UVU camp director. “We wanted to give students a really good crash course in how to manage personal finances. We also wanted to provide them with leadership training, professional etiquette, presentation skills, and team building.”

“The Schwab Foundation has funded a camp like this at Texas Tech for the last four years, and they wanted to expand it nationally. We’re proud that UVU was the first place selected for expansion. We’re getting more job offers than we have students for, so this camp provides a great way to get the word out that not only does UVU have a financial planning degree, but we have a top-ranked program that we want to recruit students to. To have a prominent financial service company select UVU and fund a quality high school camp is great exposure for the Woodbury School of Business and PFP programs.”

“The feedback was amazingly positive. The students had an awesome time, and many had a desire to sign up again next year. They were able to develop their presentation skills and build confidence handling money. It was great experience for the high school students to see what it would be like to be a university student. I underestimated how good the high school students would be, but I guess the type of student that signs up for a weeklong financial planning camp is a pretty serious student because we had some amazing talent here. They were really engaged and worked their tails off the whole week.”

“The camp was a great place to make friends and learn how to invest in my future,” said Analise Dean, a participant from Orem High School. “The biggest takeaway for me was that I was able to learn so much about financial planning that I didn’t know.”

“Along with the $500 to each member of the winning team, one person from every team was awarded a scholarship to the UVU PFP program,” said Luke. “It was a really fun and amazing event. We’re grateful that the Charles Schwab Foundation provided the resources to allow us to run this camp and have cool activities like iDrive and laser tag. Having a partner like the Schwab Foundation allowed us to put on an amazing event and showcase the school and program.”