A section of the Financial Counseling Clinic services still remains useful to students even after sending previous services to the Student Loan Education Office.

The ISU Financial Counseling Clinic offers services to students to help them understand different aspects of financial obligations, such as credit and credit cards, budgeting and debt management, investing advice and job benefits.

Jeanna Nation, financial counselor and lecturer, said Iowa State University’s Financial Counseling Clinic will be integrating counseling services into classroom experiences and will be focused on services for clients of the community to train their students in family financial planning.

“Our core mission is different,” Nation said. “Our mission will be on the teaching and implementation of best practices for our students, and not purely as a service for the university.”

The Financial Counseling Clinic sent previous counseling services to the new Student Loan Education Office after a meeting last year with the Government of the Student Body.

“The senate actually voted for us to keep our funding, but it then went up for presidential veto,” Nation said.

The clinic then met with the Government of the Student Body and Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Tom Hill.

“At that point we said that it makes more sense for us to step back and allow the shift to happen and we will take a different approach in moving forward and focus on our teaching in more of a laboratory setting,” Nation said. “That step back allowed for the veto to go through and for the funding to shift.”

Jonathan Fox, director of the counseling clinic, said the clinic fully endorsed the decision.

“The last thing we want to be is a burden to this process of when we’re all trying to make everybody’s finances better,” Fox said.

The decision was then made to create the new Student Loan Education Office.

The Student Loan Education Office will do the counseling and the workshop component. Fox said there is a number of ways the counseling clinic can help.

“First and foremost…we still have the academic courses because we also know that courses matter. We are also doing the research to try to make sure that those teaching-delivered pieces for the counseling is as effective as it can possibly be,” Fox said.

Fox said he believes the most effective tool in helping people with their finances is having a good advocate.

“A good financial counseling planner — that is our total bottom line…to train the very best financial counseling planners anywhere,” Fox said.

The Financial Counseling Clinic is about to be the only undergraduate program that has a certified education program from the Certified Financial Planner Board in all of Iowa.

For students interested in a career in financial planning, they would be directed to attend Iowa State University.

“It wouldn’t be to the business school, the University of Iowa or the University of Northern Iowa. It would be this one, which is actually pretty neat,” Fox said.

In conjunction with efforts from the Student Loan Education Office, the Financial Counseling Clinic still has several projects in the works.

“It is not that our relationship ends or will end, because it is going to be a continuing effort moving forward,” Nation said.

Roberta Johnson, director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, said she believes the focus of the Student Loan Education Office is on students, whereas the Financial Counseling Clinic focuses on community members, but they cross paths periodically.

“We have students who request services that are beyond our expertise, which they claim were previously provided by the [Financial Counseling Clinic.]  In those few cases, we contact the [Financial Counseling Clinic] to determine if this is something they provide and refer the student appropriately,” Johnson said.

Fox said the counseling clinic is excited about this opportunity because counseling discussions are not going to be predominately a student debt discussion, a student loan issue or student focused finances.

“It is still going to come up and it will still be a big part in what we do, but it is not going to be exclusively what we do,” Fox said. “By not being this exclusive student service, we have the opportunity to be a little bit more selective and create the learning experience for our students.”  

To contact the Financial Counseling Clinic, call 515-294-2505. The office is located at 2330 Palmer Building.