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]
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]
“The trouble with opportunity is that it always comes disguised as hard work,” Dr. Herbert V. Prochnow once wrote. That could be a fitting description for the programs at the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which students describe as challenging, yet career-changing. Prochnow, a noted toastmaster and author who went on to become an executive at the First National Bank of Chicago, started the school in 1945 in collaboration with what was then the School of Commerce at UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Bankers Association. [Continue]
How much will a banker do for the community? Pete Reichardt of Farmers & Merchants Bank of Tomah, Wis., will jump into the icy waters of the Mississippi — five times. [Continue]