The Financial Wellness Program offers free, non-credit financial-literacy workshops to students at the College of Business and Economics, California State University, Los Angeles, a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution. The program has run at the College for more than six years, and I have coordinated it since Fall 2024.
Since 2025–26 the program has run as a connected, certificate-bearing workshop series rather than a set of one-off events. Sessions are open to every major, nothing is graded, and each session is held in person and on Zoom at the same time.
2025–26 in Brief
The program ran eleven workshops and sessions. In the fall, alongside its regular workshops, it ran four thirty-minute mini-workshops at the College’s Open House and Día de los Muertos celebration, each with 25 or more students, inside an event that drew more than 290 visitors. In the spring it ran a five-session certificate series that reached more than 45 students, with 20 to 25 at each session.
More than 70 percent of spring participants came back for more than one session, with no grade attached. Asked whether they would recommend the program to a friend, participants gave it an average of 9.0 out of 10.
Session counts are kept by the program. The recommendation score and the participant profile below come from a voluntary exit survey.
Who It Reaches
The program concentrates on the students most exposed to financial decisions made without good information. Most participants who answered the exit survey were the first in their family to attend college, and more than half received a Pell Grant. Others had transferred in or were working 20 or more hours a week alongside their studies.
What Students Learn
Budgeting and cash flow, debt and credit, investing, insurance, taxes and leases, and how the legal system touches personal finance. Topics are scheduled against what students ask for; in the 2025–26 survey they asked most for negotiation, credit repair, taxes, retirement planning, and buying a home.
From Students to Community
The program is built to reach past campus. Students who attend four of the six 2026–27 workshops earn a Certificate of Participation. Certificate holders who then log documented service hours earn a Financial Wellness Outreach Volunteer credential and carry financial-literacy instruction into the community, including through Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), which offers free tax preparation to low-income households.
The program works with the Office of the Dean of Students, including a segment of First Flight orientation for new students, and with practitioner volunteers such as Bruce Bolkin, Esq., CPA, who led the full 2025–26 spring series.
Program Materials, Fall 2026
Lead a Session
Professionals in finance, law, tax, insurance, or real estate who would like to lead a 75-minute session for 20 to 25 students can reach me through the Contact page. The program handles scheduling, promotion, registration, and materials.
