AFCPE Member Awards: Outstanding Education Program
This award goes to an educational program that is significantly impacting our field. Congratulations to the 2025 recipient, Financial Field Trips Corp and Whitney Ramirez, AFC®.
Applications for the outstanding educational program must have well-defined objectives for its target audience, and provide supportive educational materials, content and methods that are audience-appropriate. The program must be innovative and adaptable for other practitioners and educators to replicate and/or adapt in their work.
Celebrating Our Outstanding Educational Program Award Winners
2025 Program: Financial Field Trips Corp.
Whitney Ramirez, AFC®.
Financial Field Trips Corp. is a Maryland-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit transforming the way financial education is delivered. Founded by Whitney Ramirez, a former public-school teacher, AFC candidate, and current Department of Defense (DoD) contractor, the program combines traditional instruction with immersive field trips to banks, car dealerships, apartment complexes, and other locations. This experiential model increases retention, builds confidence, and empowers youth and underserved communities to act toward financial independence.
Their slogan, “We Are on The Road to Riches,” reflects both their literal approach—traveling to real-world financial destinations—and deeper mission to guide participants toward lifelong economic empowerment. It resonates with today’s youth by reframing wealth-building as a journey they can begin now, with the right tools and exposure.
2024 Program: 3RD Decade Financial Education
The 3RD Decade Financial Education Program is a transformative initiative empowering young adults ages 18-35 with financial literacy skills. Through remote classes and personalized mentorship, the program has reached over 1,000 participants across 46 states, fostering a community dedicated to financial empowerment and independence.
2023 Program: 2023: "Real Money. Real World."
Ohio State University Extension – Fulton County
As a program of Ohio State University Extension, “Real Money. Real World.” is fun and distinctive because it includes an interactive spending simulation that provides the opportunity to make lifestyle and budget choices similar to those made by 27-year-old adults. RMRW has three parts, including four preparatory classroom lessons, a hands-on budget management and decision-making spending simulation, and a post-session evaluation of spending choices made during the simulation.
2022 Program: Max by AccessLex®
Many law students today are taking on far higher debt loads than they have the experience to manage. But debt management is far from the whole story. Students often lack a framework for making good financial decisions, which can impact every aspect of their personal and professional futures. And while financial education counseling may be available, it is often not robust enough to meet their needs, nor is it tailored to address their individual circumstances. MAX by AccessLex Institute ,the first-of-its-kind, is a multi-faceted personal finance curriculum exclusively for law students.
MAX combines in-person workshops, online and virtual programming, and one-on-one counseling to leverage the strengths of law students and fit into their demanding schedules. The program is structured to complement the work that law school administrators are already doing to educate their students on loan repayment and personal finance.
2021 Program: Predictably Irrational Book Study by Andi Wrenn, AFC®
The Predictably Irrational Book Study was developed to engage financial professionals in discussion related to personal finance. The book and research by Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, explains the hidden forces that drive how we make decisions. While these decisions are often far less rational than we think, once we know more about them, they can help us stay on top of our finances, interact better with others and live happier lives. Through this self-study program, 182 financial professionals gained knowledge of these forces and an understanding of how to use that knowledge to assist clients when it comes to the financial decisions they make. This program can be easily adapted to use with consumers, students, employees, and professionals using this book or others related to personal finance. Building a community of people sharing and learning together is a great part of this education program.
2018 Program: Texas Tech University Personal Finance (PFI) Program
Dr. Sandra Huston & Jennifer Wilson, AFC®
The Personal Finance (PFI) Program at Texas Tech University was launched in the spring semester of 2013. It started with one course and over the years has expanded into offering several courses and currently serving approximately 3,000 students per academic year. The PFI Program enjoys a vibrant presence on campus with the vision that all students will be financially literate before they graduate. It offers financial literacy courses along with opportunities for students to understand the psychological and behavioral aspects of money. Its mission has three key foundational elements, the “3 E’s” – encouragement, engagement and evaluation. Staff collaborate with partners to provide financial awareness and learning opportunities throughout the campus community and beyond. Course materials are intentionally designed to disseminate content through a variety of methods to appeal to all learning styles and ensure that students experience success in their learning processes.
2017 Program: University of Delaware & University of Maryland Cooperative Extension’s “Smart Choice and Smart Use Health Insurance”
Maria Pippidis, MS, AFC®, Jesse Ketterman, MS, PhD, Mia Russell, MBA, PhD, AFC®
The Smart Choice Health Insurance™ and Smart Use Health Insurance™ program consists of five multidisciplinary modules that provide health insurance literacy education to help people get the information they need to make effective health insurance decisions. The program’s objective is to help adults age 18 and older build their knowledge, skills and confidence to choose and use their health insurance wisely. By creating, testing and evaluating the modules, and working with Extension Educators around the country, the team determined that participants increase their confidence and likelihood to take positive action when choosing and using their health insurance.
2016 Program: The University of Utah Personal Money Management Center
Ann House and Tiffany Davis
This program seeks to provide exceptional personal finance education to students so they are able to enroll and be successful in a local Individual Development Account (IDA) matched savings program. By partnering with the community IDA program, they assist low- to moderate-income students to save a portion of their income and get a matched grant to pay for an entire semester of school. This helps University of Utah students who may be struggling financially to graduate. Additionally, the program teaches money management skills that will assist the student as they continue to make consumer decisions beyond college to achieve lifelong successful financial outcomes.
2015 Program: IU Money Smart$
Phil Schuman and Morgan McMillan
Indiana University’s innovative MoneySmarts program is designed to make financial discussions approachable to students. It contains 50 lessons on different financial topics relevant to college students that are released at “decision times” for students to provide an opportunity for “just-in-time” education. Each lesson is approximately 3 – 5 minutes and is written in a friendly manner so as not to make the content overwhelming.
Become an AFCPE Member and Gain Awards Eligibility
AFCPE members are eligible for exclusive awards, grants, and professional development opportunities. Join our diverse and inclusive network of financial professionals, researchers, practitioners, and educators today.
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