Blog

Graceland University SIFE had our first class today and we are very excited about the new students eager to join our team.

Aug 5, 2010, Sam Walton Fellow

Graceland University SIFE is proud to announce our new Sam Walton Fellow, Justin Akers. We are very excited to have Justin back on the team and look forward to a great year.

May 12, 2010, Greetings From Nationals!

Greetings! The Graceland SIFE team arrived here in Minneapolis yesterday evening and kicked off our stay with an alumni reception. Andy Simpson was honored with speeches by leadership council and the SIFE team put together a book full of pictures and letters to give to him so that he will never forget his time with GU SIFE.

Today kicks off the presentations at the Minneapolis event center. Presentations begin at 8:25 and Graceland will be presenting in our league (11) at 1:25.

May 7, 2010, Financial Literacy

The Financial Literacy group has been busy, busy, busy! Last week, April 26th-29th was Senior Week! The week was a great learning week for graduating seniors. They learned about ethics and future costs of living, such as buying their first apartment or new car. There was also be a fashion show of what to wear and what not to wear in certain business situations. At the end of the week we had dress for success and mock interviews followed up by an amazing steak dinner. We want our graduating seniors to be prepared as much as possible for what’s to come in the next chapter of their lives.

Please continue to check back to see what other amazing things out Financial Literacy team is doing.

May 5, 2010, HealthEd Connect

This semester, our team had a little bit of a slow beginning after coming back from Zambia. HealthEd Connect was a brand new team, and we only have two members. Although it was a rough beginning, we at least had somewhere to start from. When we worked with the children at the schools in Chipulukusu and Kasompe, they drew illustrations of their friends, family, and oftentimes, nature. We took these drawings home to the U.S. with us, and we had to choose a few different designs to turn into cover designs for greeting cards. The little artists’ names were included on the back of the card, along with their age and location. We printed 250 cards, using 2 different designs, and sent the cards to Independence, Missouri, to the Community of Christ World Conference. There, Jac and Sherri Kirkpatrick sold ALL of the cards in packs of 5, for $5 a pack. This made $250, and subtracting SIFE’s cost for the envelopes, which was $33.05, our total profit for our first endeavor with the cards was $226.95. Since the cards sold so well, and more individuals expressed an interest in purchasing them, we are currently planning on printing 500 more, which, if sold, would generate close to $450 to send back to the schools.

Michelle Mahlik, a friend of Jac and Sherri’s who went on the Zambia trip, e-mailed yesterday about an illustration that she took home with her. It was of a bicycle that a boy named Eddison Banda drew at the Kasompe school. Michelle is currently getting the card design featuring the illustration mass printed so that she and her husband can sell them at bike races over the summer. They donated the money used to print the cards, so all of the money generated will be pure profit to send back to the schools.

HealthEd Connect is having great success, and we are sure that the children will feel a great sense of accomplishment in knowing that they possess skills that can support themselves and their families financially.

May 4, 2010, SiteLinks

Apr 28, 2010, OAMC Packet

Apr 24, 2010, ETHICS ETHICS ETHICS ETHICS

ETHICS ETHICS ETHICS ETHICS. The Graceland University SIFE team taught the 4 Es of Entrepreneurship to the hundreds of Entrepreneurial roundtable participants. Our team understands the importance of a strong moral compass and how a lack thereof would have extremely negative consequences. Our SIFE team decided that ethics should be at the very fiber of our efforts, and not just a standalone project. We have partnered with the Skills for Life team and Stock Market Simulation team in developing separate ethics curriculums for their teachings. Just last week, we went into a senior seminar class at Blue Valley High School and taught them some important skills that are not taught in a classroom. This includes resume skills, dressing for an interview and even the importance of posture and eye contact. We managed to fit in a segment on ethics and an ethical decision-making framework that they could use whenever faced with an ethical dilemma. We have developed a similar ethics curriculum for the stock market simulation team and will be going into the classrooms next week to transfer this knowledge.

Apr 22, 2010, Stock Market Simulation and the NYSE

Over the last week and a half, we have been back into the high school classrooms no to teach, but to present 3 students with a trip to New York City to go to the NYSE, 3 students a $500 scholarship to Graceland and 3 students with a $50 Best Buy gift card. These students seemed to enjoy the recognition for their efforts. The students from each school that are going to New York are very excited as most of them have never been out of Iowa or on an airplane.

Next week we are partnering with the Ethics Team and heading back into the classrooms to make sure these students have some knowledge on Ethics and the importance of it in the business world today.

Apr 20, 2010, Skills for Life

The Skills for Life team went to Blue Springs High School on Monday, April 19th. We conducted two 90 minute sessions covering job and college applications, resumes, interviews, budgeting, and credit.

Mr. Hagerty, one of the Personal Finance teachers, was gracious enough to let us come and take over his classes. The district is conducting MAP(Missouri Assessment Program) testing this week but we were lucky the seniors did not have to participate so they could be apart of our class.

Mike Palermo, the video teacher at Blue Springs, is working on a video for our team to help us affect more students.

We hope to continue teaching more classes this semester so keep an eye out for more updates.

Apr 20, 2010, Sustainable Living Week

Apr 18, 2010, Kids Bank Update

The GU SIFE Kid’s Bank team is making some positive strides. The team met with Greg Sutherland, director of admissions, and received approval of the awarding of $200 scholarships to those 5th graders who open up new savings accounts. We have had six new accounts open and are waiting for another bank to get more information on newly opened accounts. The team will be awarding at least two scholarships of $200 each. The team is starting up its program in Leon starting April 19th. We will be teaching in two different classrooms which is very exciting for the team! Thus far, the team has been able to expand into four different schools and will start working in Bethany fall of 2010. The team got to experience some recognition from one of the judges at the SIFE Regional Competition, one judge said that he was highly anticipating hearing about the efforts the Kid’s Bank team. The team also received some great news recently, the team was awarded the Bridge Endowment in the amount of $500 which is used to support the Kid’s Bank program. The team will continue its hard work and continue to make positive strides in making youth more knowledgeable about basic banking concepts and the importance of saving.

Apr 13, 2010, Skills for Life

The Skills for Life team is excited to announce that our project is expanding quickly. We have arranged with the Blue Springs School District to teach in the Senior Seminar class at Blue Springs High School on Monday, April 19th. The Media class at the high school has volunteered to come tape our lessons and make a video to be shown across the campus. We are looking forward to working with around 60 students and are hoping to have a positive impact on their future. Please check back to hear about how our visit goes.

Apr 6, 2010, Stock Market Team Prepares for New York

This coming week the Stock Market Simulation Team is heading back into schools to follow up with the students. We will be presenting them with their awards from the Stock Market Simulation, one of which is an all expenses paid trip to New York to go to the NYSE. This trip is scheduled to take place on May 7th. Other awards include, scholarships to Graceland and an iPod.

We will also be teaching them about the importance of ethics and how it relates to them and their everyday lives. We want them to have some knowledge on differentiating between right and wrong in the business world. During this time we will also be covering savings and it's importance.

Apr 5, 2010, Pizza Ethics and Roundtable

This week has been a busy one for our SIFE team. On Wednesday we hosted our first Pizza Ethics Symposium with over 120 participants. Jeff Thrutchley led a game called "Win as Much as You Can." This game taught us the ethics of earning money at the expense of others. Johnny Huntsman, owner of Johnny's Pizza, was the keynote speaker. Johnny shared with us the ethical dilemmas he experienced in his career. To conclude the event, participants recieved free pizza donated from 4 pizza establishments in Lamoni; Pizza Shack, Pizza Hut, Casey's, and Godfather's.

Pizza Ethics was a nice warm up for Roundtable, which took place on Thursday. Throughout the day we heard from a few different panels about the ethical issues they have incurred in their respective lines of work. We also had 2 time slots devoted to breakout sessions. We had 6 speakers covering topics ranging from Global Ethics to Financial Ethics to Ethics vs the Law (our team expresses our gratitude to those who came and spoke for our Roundtable event). During our lunch break, the GU SIFE presentation team gave the presentation that they will give at Regionals this coming Thursday. The day concluded with the keynote, Brent Wouters, giving a presentation over Cirrus Aircraft. Brent is the CEO for Cirrus and had a lot of interesting things to share. We hope that all attendees of the Pizza Ethics and Roundtable enjoyed the events and learned a little more about Ethics.

Apr 3, 2010, Happy Easter!

Mar 30, 2010, SIFE Tools

Mar 30, 2010, Regionals 2010

Our SIFE team has been working very hard to prepare for our upcoming regional competition taking place on April 8th in Chicago, Illinois.

Regional’s is where different SIFE teams compete against one another to determine which of them achieved the most impact improving the quality of life and standard of living for people in need. An audiovisual presentation will be given that shows what we have worked on and accomplished this year. Our presentation team as well as our leadership council has put in long hours to make sure our presentation is top notch.

The regional competition also provides a unique opportunity for students to connect, collaborate and learn from each other. There will be a career fair that begins in the morning of the competition and runs throughout the course of the day. It provides companies with an opportunity to meet, interview and even hire SIFE students for internships or full time jobs.

Graceland SIFE is very excited for the upcoming competition and cannot wait to show the judges what we have achieved this year!

Mar 29, 2010, Skills for Life

This past Thursday GU SIFE's Skills for Life team (formally known as Pick Up the PACE) went to PACE Juvenile Center. Our team taught the students success skills relating to savings accounts, debit and credit cards, and keep tract of finances. Students enjoyed watching video clips and answering questions regarding these topics. We look forward to going back within the next few weeks.

Also related to the Skills for Life team, Blue Springs School District contacted us about the possibilty of teaching at the alternative school. We had a conference call with them on Thursday and will be sending them a detailed lesson plan this week. Our goal date to get into the classroom is the week of April 19th. We hope to see this partnership blossom.

Mar 29, 2010, Roundtable 2010

Registration/Refreshments – The Shaw Center for Performing Arts
Welcome/Intro
Ethics Roundtable
Structured Networking
Roundtable Breakout Session 1
Lunch and GU SIFE Presentation
Roundtable Breakout Session 2
Professionals Networking
Entry Level Ethics Roundtable
Break/Refreshments
Awards
Keynote – Brent Wouters, President and CEO of Cirrus Aircraft
Closing/Prizes

Financial Ethics – Dave Brown
Global Ethics – Matt Naylor, PhD
Environmental Ethics – Steve Graybill
Profitable Ethics – Kevin Prine, PhD
Ethics vs. the Law – Karen Minton, JD