St. Lawrence Fed Challenge Team Earns Spot Among Nation’s Top Performers
St. Lawrence University’s Fed Challenge team made it to the semi-finals of the 2025 Federal Reserve College Fed Challenge, placing them among the top 18 out of around 150 colleges and universities.
The annual competition, hosted by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, tasks teams from across the country to emulate the role of monetary policymakers as they analyze current economic and financial indicators and recommend a course of action, such as adjusting interest rates.
“I’m incredibly proud of this year’s Fed Challenge team,” says Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics Cynthia Bansak, who teaches the Fed Challenge course. “Among a very large and competitive national field, the students did an outstanding job of weighing data, uncertainty, and communicating under pressure.”
The team recommended gradually cutting interest rates into the 3.75-4% range, while keeping policy flexible and data-dependent, as the team thinks that a weaker labor market is a bigger risk to the economy at the moment than a major new surge in inflation.
“Basically, we recommended to carefully ease off the brakes to protect jobs and growth, but to be ready to slow or pause rate cuts if the data does not show inflation moving back toward target,” says Aidan Gallagher ’25.
Aidan emphasized the value of the course and the competition.
“It pushed us to move beyond our standard coursework, take what was actually happening in the economy, decide what mattered most for growth, jobs, and inflation, and organize that into a clear recommendation,” he says.
Although the course officially convenes in the fall, the team began preparing for the Fed Challenge competition last May and met biweekly on Zoom through much of the summer, where Bansak guided discussions on the labor market, housing costs, and the stickiness of inflation. During those weeks, students completed online certifications so they could use the proprietary terminals in the University’s Bloomberg Finance Lab once they returned to campus.
Evan Mitchell ’27 says those early meetings allowed the team to “mesh” early on. “Our teamwork and commitment have certainly been keys to success for our group,” he says.
Throughout the course, the team leaned on Laurentian alumni at key financial institutions for valuable feedback on their presentation and policy recommendations, networking with them in the process. These alumni include Thomas Sapio ’88, Kai Jensen ’21, Emily Green ’21, and Lee Ormiston ’89.
“I’m so grateful for the remarkable engagement from our alumni, who provided invaluable mentorship and helped our students expand their professional networks,” Bansak says.
Aidan agrees. “Their feedback and perspective helped us sharpen our thinking and see how the tools we’re learning at St. Lawrence apply in practice.”
The members of this year’s team who were selected to give the oral presentation include Owen Purinton ’26, Evangeline Norman ’26, Noah Korman ’26, Bodie Molnar ’27, and Patrick Walford ’26.
