 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
         |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| navigate: home: magazine: fall 2002: article | |
|
Penn State Erie students help develop new ISO standards By Loretta Brandon | ||||||
|
Three students in the School of Business at Penn State Erie have completed a semester-long project that will assist in developing new international standards for financial planners around the world. Leslie Coven of Kittanning, Jason Chmielewski of Erie and Ryan Ferguson of Clarion worked with finance professor Kay Johnson, lecturer in economics, to develop a multinational matrix that clearly delineates financial planning standards in Australia, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The students’ multinational matrix was used by the United States’ head of delegation at an international ISO meeting in Tokyo during the spring. According to Johnson, the matrix is seen as a template and resource for other technical advisor work teams. Johnson serves on an international working group that is addressing the standardization of education, ethics and examinations for personal financial planners. She also represents academic and financial planning educational institutions as a member of the U.S. Technical Advisor Group to the International Standards Organization Technical Committee 222. “In order to develop international standards, we have to take a close look at the standards that already exist in the participating countries,” Johnson said. “That’s a big job.” This is the first ISO group to develop standards for a service profession, she added. Previously all standards related to manufacturing. Coven, an international business and finance major; Chmielewski, a finance major; and Ferguson, a business economics major, agreed to take on the task as an independent study course. During the semester, they reviewed more than 300 pages of standards from five different countries, placing them in a matrix that allowed them to determine what standards countries already have in common. They started with U.S. standards, then added categories for the four other countries. The group created a poster that would show their progress in the development of the matrix. “This project is one that will benefit every country that participates,” Chmielewski said. “It’s great to know that the work we did is actually in use and that it will make a difference in how the international standards for financial planning are developed. For a student, it’s also a great résumé builder.” Coven agreed, adding the matrix was a good way to see the crossover in how countries relate to one another in the financial planning profession. Although the work was more than any of the three anticipated, all agreed they would do it again and recommend working on the ISO project to others. “We are currently using the matrix as a basis for developing the United States’ position for the upcoming international working group meeting scheduled for September in Charleston, S.C.,” Johnson said. “I hope I’ll be able to find more students next semester with the initiative and creativity I’ve seen in these three.” | |||||
| ||||||
© 2002 Outreach Communications, Outreach & Cooperative Extension, The Pennsylvania State University phone: (814) 865-8108, fax: (814) 863-2765, e-mail: outreachnews@outreach.psu.edu |
||||||
