NEXUS, Calvin’s peer financial coaching service, is one of several student groups to move into new office spaces in the library this year. In addition to their new central location, the NEXUS team has launched a new partnership with Student Life, hosting “Ramen to Riches” personal finance seminars on Wednesday afternoons.
NEXUS provides free peer-to-peer financial coaching services, where students can meet one-on-one with a peer coach to discuss budgeting, credit, student loan management and more.
“It’s a free service, and we provide a lot of value students should definitely take advantage of, because we do have a lot of resources,” Rebekah Philip, a finance major and one of the NEXUS student coaches, said.
Philip first heard about NEXUS in her sophomore year when she found their office in the library and overheard some friends talking about their meetings. Later, after she had switched her major from human resources to finance, Philip decided to apply for a job as a NEXUS coach.
The program currently has about 140 “clients” — students who have scheduled one or multiple meetings this year — and NEXUS coaches usually have a combined total of somewhere between 250 to 250 meetings in an academic year, according to NEXUS program coordinator and professor of finance Nate Weflen.
A new office space in the renovated library gives NEXUS increased visibility, financial coach Brian Schaaf said.He hopes this will be the answer to a persistent challeng the group has faced in the past: how to spread the word about the services they provide.
Last year, with their old office space under construction, the NEXUS team “had to be really creative” in how they connected with students, Weflen told Chimes. “Last year, with the library being shut down.. it was just really challenging,” Weflen explained.
Now that they’re back near the heart of campus, the NEXUS team has been “on a positive trajectory” with increased student interest and appointments, according to both Weflen and Schaaf.
The goal of NEXUS, according to Weflen, is to help students build their own stable financial future. “Building some of these great habits and some of this great stewardship foundation — the long-term trajectory of those impacts is huge,” Weflen said.
NEXUS got its start at Calvin in 2018 after current CFO Dirk Pruis, who was a professor of finance at the time, reached out to the Ron Blue Institute. The program is modeled after similar peer-led financial coaching groups at schools including Liberty University, Cornerstone University, and Indiana Wesleyan University, according to Schaaf and Weflen.
All the programs use a structure based on materials from the Ron Blue Institute, a financial advice group whose mission statement says it is “committed to changing the way Christians think, act, and communicate about financial stewardship.”
When it comes to teaching students how to manage their finances responsibly, NEXUS is mainly focused on education, not recommendations. “Instead of saying ‘hey, I recommend you put money in a certain stock’, we say ‘let me tell you about how stocks work so you can make a decision,’” Schaaf told Chimes.
This educational approach is meant to help raise awareness for students about their ability to manage their own finances.
The strongest NEXUS differentiates itself from other financial advice is in its biblical foundation, Schaaf said. “I always emphasize we’re a biblically-based service.” At NEXUS, that means categorizing the ways money can be used into four broad groups: Live, Give, Owe, and Grow. These categories are meant to help balance students’ relationship with their finances and remind them that in the end, “God owns it all,” Weflen said.
Students interested in financial coaching services from NEXUS can reach out via email to [email protected].
