For Release: Immediate
From: Mike Counter, St. Norbert College, www.snc.edu, 920-403-3089, mike.counter@snc.edu
January 26, 2012
DE PERE, Wis.: The iOMe Challenge, a national competition to raise awareness of the nation’s retirement crisis, is pleased to announce that a team from Virginia Tech University won this year’s grand prize. Students Allison Perdue, Paula Craun, Jamie Kerr and Matt Maranowski collaborated on the winning entry, earning $10,000 plus an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to present their entry to members of Congress.
Virginia Tech professor Hyrum Smith served as the team’s faculty advisor, and will receive a $2,000 cash prize. Judges also awarded two Honorable Mentions, to the University of Maryland and Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich. The Honorable Mention teams each received $2,000, plus $500 for their faculty advisors.
The iOMe Challenge competition encourages the 80 million members of the Millennial generation to help solve America’s retirement problem. Student teams write essays and produce a short video to answer the questions: Why do people today feel it is much harder to engage in financial savings than earlier generations when, on average, the earlier generations were much poorer than today? What would you propose as a solution to change and increase savings rates?
Finalists were judged by a blue ribbon panel that met in Miami, Fla., on January 14, 2012. The distinguished judging panel included:
· Marty Merzer – Retired journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner with the Miami Herald
· Laura Schwartz – Principal, White House Strategies consulting firm and former White House director of events in the Clinton administration
· Angela Lyons – Associate professor and director of the Center for Economic and Financial Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
· Michael Price – Assistant professor of economics at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville
· Charles Wise – Founding director of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University and three-time recipient of the William and Frederick Mosher Award
To learn more about the iOMe Challenge and view videos from this year’s winners, visit: http://iomechallenge.org.
The winning team will present its ideas at an award reception sponsored by financial services firm Plan Administrators, Inc. (PAi) in Washington, D.C., at a date to be announced.
This year’s contest was sponsored by Ally Bank, PAi, Sage North America, the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA), National Association of Government Defined Pension Plans (NAGDCA) and St. Norbert College.
For more information on the iOMe Challenge, contact David Wegge at St. Norbert College at 920-217-7738 or Jayne Black at the St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute at 920-403-3247.
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