As college students flooded Mountain View Excessive Faculty’s hallways for lunch on a latest Thursday afternoon, 4 college students stood behind the campus’s financial institution department desk prepared to assist prospects.
The scholars are enrolled in iQ Credit score Union’s Pupil-Run Campus Branches program — a course at native excessive colleges that’s rooted in monetary literacy and includes working as a teller. As a part of this system, college students run iQ’s campus branches.
Every campus department is open in the course of the colleges’ lunch hours when college students can open financial savings and checking accounts, deposit money and checks, withdraw cash, and be taught extra about what the credit score union has to supply.
“This program goes beyond the teller basics,” stated Brian Juárez, iQ’s schooling program supervisor. “It focuses on leadership development, effective engagement and marketing skills.”
Workers members from iQ are assigned to supervise the campus branches and information college students all through the varsity yr.
The credit score union created its Pupil-Run Campus Branches program in 1997. It now companions with six Clark County excessive colleges — 4 from Evergreen, one from Vancouver and one from Battle Floor public colleges. In 2016, Mountain View grew to become Evergreen’s third faculty to open a department. Heritage Excessive Faculty opened the newest Evergreen campus department in 2019; Union Excessive Faculty opened a department in 2007 and Evergreen Excessive Faculty within the late Nineties.
The highschool course tackles banking fundamentals, employability, management and office expertise, and monetary planning and literacy.
“The students get to undergo extensive financial training and learn best practices to serve as tellers,” Juárez stated. “They also get to develop and execute campus marketing campaigns to encourage their peers to become iQ members.”
Mountain View’s monetary literacy instructor Lisa Harvey stated college students additionally achieve public talking expertise and learn to reply to constructive criticism within the workforce.
“There’s the classroom part where they learn more of the textbook knowledge, and in here, they put that knowledge to work,” she stated, pointing to the varsity’s campus department Feb. 20.
Mountain View senior Kateryna Miftakhova, 17, guided different iQ college students whereas establishing for the lunch rush Feb. 20. She stated her advertising and marketing presentation to different college students was about waking up and taking management of their funds.
“We really emphasize that banking is not evil,” Miftakhova stated. “Banking isn’t a big monster. Banking is not something that’s going to want to drag you into debt.”
As one of many faculty’s iQ interns, Miftakhova additionally spends time on the Salmon Creek iQ Credit score Union department.
This system provides 10 paid internships for these enrolled within the course. Interns work within the campus branches and at iQ places, Juárez stated, the place they be taught extra accountability and management to assist different college students.
“(It provides) that competitive edge for the workforce,” Juárez stated. “It is a career launchpad where students are able to gain those real-world skills by working in a student-operated branch.”
Since 2015, greater than 40 college students have labored as iQ interns whereas in class, and about 20 efficiently obtained careers on the credit score union, in response to its webpage.
“It’s a great experience, especially if you haven’t had a job (before),” stated senior Luis Ramirez, 17, the opposite Mountain View intern. “If iQ let me, I would want to join as a bank teller or anything (after graduation). They care a lot about their members.”