Reason Magazine 2014 Quartal 2 Seite 55

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For risk management students the Spencer RIMS Risk Man agement Challenge is their national championship This year the top students from the best risk manage ment programs in the country vied for a spot in the finals at the Risk Insurance and Management Society s Annual Meeting The top three teams earned an opportunity to compete in front of 200 industry professionals at the four day annual conference that attracts more than 10 000 people from the risk and insurance industry It s crazy to think that we as stu dents had an opportunity to speak in front of these people said Joseph Nee ley captain of the runner up team from Florida State University To have all these people with all this experience in the industry coming up to us and con gratulating us on what we had done it was incredible The Spencer RIMS Risk Manage ment Challenge was developed three years ago to give risk management stu dents an opportunity to showcase their skills on the national stage The Chal lenge was the creation of Debbi Little who at the time was director of the Risk and Insurance Studies Center at Virginia Commonwealth University VCU in Richmond Virginia USA She felt that risk management needed its own national championship There are several other collegiate challenges explains Little The Fed eral Reserve runs one for economics stu dents There s one for HR students and there s a real estate challenge So why not risk management The collegiate real estate challenge was run by one of Little s colleagues at Villanova University who suggested Little spearhead a national risk manage ment challenge Several schools have their own challenges Little explained but there were none at the national level So Little approached the Spencer Educa tional Foundation an organization that works to fund educational opportunities for risk managers and insurance leaders Little has been associated with Spencer since she was a student in the 1990s It was actually a Spencer scholar ship that allowed her to return to school as a nontraditional student in her 30s The availability of the Spencer scholarship helped steer her toward risk management and launched her 20 year career So Spencer has always been near and dear to my heart Little explained Established in 1979 the Spen cer Educational Foundation provides scholarships and educational grants to promote and encourage undergraduate graduate and doctoral study of risk man agement It is affiliated with RIMS and is named after the late Robert S Spencer Spencer was a leader in the development of the risk management discipline and past president of RIMS Since its formation the Spen cer Educational Foundation has been a leader in the education of future risk managers The Foundation has awarded more than 740 scholarships totaling US 5 3 million It has also awarded US 2 2 million in grants to universities and professional institutions for educa tional programs and conferences FM Global has always seen the value in risk management educa tion In 2008 FM Global contributed US 525 000 to the Foundation the largest gift in the Foundation s 30 year history The gift included funds for indi vidual scholarships and US 300 000 earmarked to assist universities in developing new loss prevention related courses Colleges and universities are invited to apply for an annual Loss Pre vention Education Grant Applicants can receive up to US 50 000 for creat ing either undergraduate course curri cula or a graduate course that provides future risk managers with a greater understanding of the value of engineer ing in loss prevention Additionally the Foundation has sponsored internships to get risk man agement students realworld experience and has developed a Risk Manager in Residence program to get risk managers to share their expertise in the classroom Through the program risk managers with a minimum of 10 years of expe rience are invited to spend from one to three days on campus lecturing on the principles of risk management As part of the RIMS Anita Benedetti Student Involvement Program Spencer awards US 30 000 annually so select students can attend educational sessions at the RIMS Annual Conference The conference includes more than 120 edu cational sessions keynote presentations special events and an expansive exhibit hall with more than 400 exhibitors And ISSUE 2 2014 Reason 55