Fifteen years ago, Grand Rapids State Bank crossed the $250 million in asset mark to become the 40th largest bank in Minnesota. Around that time, Noah Wilcox, president, CEO and chair of the bank and its holding company, Wilcox Bancshares, gathered his board for strategic visioning. He anticipated ongoing industry consolidation and wondered how GRSB would grow — or what might happen if it did not. [Continue]
The commercial banking program is a certificate at Texas A&M, College Station, which began in 2011 with 16 students getting their bachelor of business administration degrees in finance. It was co-founded by a small group of bankers who were school alumni and faculty. [Continue]
The Pacific Coast Banking School doesn’t just teach bankers about maintaining proper capital ratios and other metrics to make sure they’re guiding their institutions on a profitable, sustainable course; it prides itself on giving bankers a well-stocked toolbox in soft skills, too — especially when it comes to leadership. [Continue]
Chad Hart is an agriculture economist and assistant professor at Iowa State University, Ames. BankBeat columnist Justin Dullum talked to Hart about the mounting effects of trade negotiations on the ag industry and what might be in store for 2019. [Continue]
Ask college students to consider a career in banking and most will automatically think Wall Street. But increasingly, colleges and universities have designed undergraduate finance programs with an eye to the needs of commercial and community banking. [Continue]
Ask bankers what they want from a graduate school of banking program, and they’ll tell you. That’s what Chris Kelley and fellow board members found in 2001, after the estate of Paul W. Barret, Jr. granted $8 million to what was then the Mid South School of Banking in Memphis, Tenn. Barret was the chairman of Barretville Bank and Trust Co., Barretville, Tenn., established by his father in 1920. [Continue]
Historic in its legacy since 1935, the American Bankers Association’s Stonier Graduate School of Banking holds special appeal for its unusual partnership. The respected Ivy League Wharton School of Business hosts the program on its campus at the University of Pennsylvania, and executives successfully completing the courses and a capstone project graduate with both a Stonier diploma and a Wharton leadership certificate. [Continue]
We lost a giant in the business world when Herb Kelleher died on Jan. 3 at the age of 87. Long before innovation and disruption were industry buzzwords, Kelleher was revolutionizing air travel with the late-1960s launch of Southwest Airlines. He opened up air travel to penny-wise consumers who previously had to rely on ground transportation for long distance trips. We can learn a few things from Kelleher. [Continue]
For Kent Belasco, becoming director of the commercial banking program at Marquette University in Milwaukee was the start of a second career. He had retired as executive vice president, chief information and operations officer at First Midwest Bank in Itasca, Ill., after 37 years in banking. In mid-2015, Marquette University was looking for a finance professor with teaching experience and a commercial banking background. MU had begun to understand “not all students wanted to be investment bankers,” Belasco said. He began to build a curriculum during his last year at the bank. [Continue]
Mary Kay Bates was at a pivotal point in her career as head of human resources at Bank Midwest in Spirit Lake, Iowa, when she weighed the options of enrolling in a master’s degree program versus attending a graduate school of banking. She opted for the latter, choosing to attend the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado. [Continue]