Heading into the 2022-23 academic year, the Actuarial Club prioritized building a vibrant and inclusive actuarial community by emphasizing member connections and increasing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts within the club.
The Actuarial Club has hosted three great employer presentations by Mutual of Omaha, CUNA Mutual, and Church Mutual, which were organized by Hannah Sell, the VP of Educational Enrichment. In recent presentations, we have seen a shift towards interactive activities such as Church Mutual’s interactive game of “Beating the Odds” on catastrophic events, which helps students better engage with the real-life content and understand how it fits in a professional actuarial context. These companies also talked about current industry issues like annuity pricing and catastrophic modelling. We are grateful to them for sharing their time with us!
Aligning with the theme of building community, VP of Member Relations and Engagement Josh Lange organized fun socials like a Halloween Social with the Risk Management and Insurance Society (RMIS) and a campus-wide scavenger hunt for club members. Our amazing mentorship program, headed by Kelly Hanlon and Kevin Konop, also has seen great attendance and engagement throughout the semester with excellent guidance within each mentorship family from our upperclassmen and enthusiastic participation from underclassmen.
Also, in giving back to the community, our VP of Finance Zhao Yang Gan hosted our first volunteering event at which members removed invasive species from Lakeshore Path.
DEI has also been near to our hearts. Starting this semester, Internal DEI Representative Dayne Lassiter launched a “Common Thread Actuarial Gathering” discussion, which is a bi-weekly meeting of faculty and students to discuss DEI issues in the actuarial profession and learn from one another’s experiences.
Looking forward to the rest of the academic year, we will continue building an inclusive actuarial community and provide club members with more enriching experiences. To achieve this, we plan to administer an Actuarial Climate Survey to determine the interests and needs of students interested in actuarial science. We also plan to hold more DEI-oriented speaker events to promote inclusivity so students can gain a broader perspective of the actuarial profession.
Overall, the Actuarial Club has been off to a great start, and we look forward to hosting more exciting events for club members and fostering an inclusive actuarial community!