Jean Lown of USU faculty honored nationally

Back in 1983 USU Professor Jean Lown was one of the founding members of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education (AFCPE).

Through her more than 30 years of active participation this national organization recently designated her a distinguished fellow.

Lown, a professor in the area of personal finance, said the recognition may have been spurred in part by her support of undergraduate students attending the AFCPE national conference.

“About 1994 I was sitting at our national conference with a graduate student and all of a sudden it came to me that our undergraduate students in the Family Finance emphasis really should be attending the conference because it’s very practitioner oriented.”

From then on she brought students to the conference, three or four every year. For several years she was the only one involving undergraduates at the conference.

She started another of her initiatives while on sabbatical in the late 1990s.

“I gave a talk to the local American Association of University Women group. Three or four women came up to me afterwards asking if there could be more classes made available.

“I started Financial Planning for Women at that point. Of course, men are always welcome to come. All the statistics indicate women live longer than men, they’re less likely to have a pension or a retirement plan, they’re more likely to be poor in old age. There are tons of statistics about why women should take more responsibility for their financial futures.”

Jean has announced her retirement. What is next?”

“Just doing a lot of the things I’ve been telling people to do all these decades,” she said. “It’s about how to take the money out once you have accumulated it. That’s the big challenge that the financial planning industry has in the past five or six years started to address seriously.

“I am also involved with a regional research project with faculty from about a dozen different universities. I will probably continue with that research project for at least awhile.”

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