Higher One, a leader in providing financial services and data analytics to college and university campuses, announced it has awarded a grant to Gateway Technical College to help fund a program which engages students in financial literacy education through the use of peer mentors.
Gateway is one of 15 recipients out of 125 applicants from two- and four-year public and private colleges and universities across the country to receive a grant from Higher One’s Financial Literacy Counts program. A total of $50,000 will be distributed to winning colleges applicants. Gateway will receive $3,500.
“Higher One launched the Financial Literacy Counts grant program to provide institutions with funding for critical financial literacy awareness campaigns, workshops, online financial literacy tools and other activities and resources that promote financial capability among college students and provide opportunities to increase students’ personal financial management skills and abilities,” said Mary Johnson, vice president of financial literacy and student aid policy at Higher One.
Gateway’s “More Money, More Problems – Your Higher One Money Mentors are Here to Help!” program will allow the college to expand its efforts to engage students in financial literacy education through the use of peer mentors. Five Higher One Money Mentors will be assigned to each of Gateway’s three main campuses to deliver a financial literacy campaign to students – two at the Racine Campus, two at the Kenosha Campus, and one on the Elkhorn Campus.
Mentors will help students sign up and complete SALT lessons, a free, online resource at the college which helps students finance higher education, manage any student loans and build personal finance skills. The program was successful in reaching out to students its first year, and the mentors will increase that effort.
Higher One grant recipients were selected based on their high levels of student involvement in planning and execution, quality and creativity of the grant’s approach, and impact on the greatest percentage of students on campus.