St. Lawrence Fed Challenge Team Tackles Real-World Financial Challenges
St. Lawrence University’s Fed Challenge team leveraged the power of their liberal arts education, the University’s top-ranked alumni network, and financial support from a local bank to prepare for this year’s virtual National College Fed Challenge.
The competition encourages students to deepen their understanding of the U.S. economy and the role of the Federal Reserve System while emulating the role of monetary policymakers as they analyze current economic and financial conditions and recommend a course of action—including adjusting interest rates.
“This class is unique in that it’s 100-percent experiential learning, and it’s student led, so it’s an opportunity for students in a major that tends to have larger classes to have a smaller, hands-on experience,” says Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics Cynthia Bansak, who teaches the Fed Challenge course.
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. 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. During class meetings, Bansak guided discussions on the labor market, housing costs, and the stickiness of inflation.
Finance-major Henry Worden ’25 says he especially appreciates the Fed Challenge course because the material is “applicable to the real world.” He adds: “I think a lot of people’s frustration with studying economics or finance is that it’s all theory, but every day this class is different based on newly released data or reports.”
John Hill-Edgar ’25, another finance-major, says the class often feels like it could be televised on CNBC: “You see people on TV talking about the economy and what the Fed should do, and we had several days in this class where we legitimately had those debates, and it felt like you could put a camera on us.”
Over mid-semester break in October, Bansak and all 12 students traveled to New York City to present their recommendation to Laurentians at key financial institutions, where they were able to get valuable feedback and network. The course was supported in part by a gift from North Country Savings Bank.
“The alumni help tremendously,” Bansak says. “It’s a really special connection we have as members of the St. Lawrence community.”
Five students were ultimately selected to represent the team in the virtual competition, including John Hill-Edgar ’25, Lauren Rundell ’25, Mitch Sampson ’25, Eric Seltzer ’25, and Edvin Strandberg ’25. All students enrolled in the course were heavily involved in the preparation and development of the recommendation and all presented the team’s recommendation in NYC over the mid-semester break. They were Jack Capizzi ’25, Andrew Cullen ’25, Alix du Plessis ’25, Lane Haehl ’25, Jackson Kelly ’25, Sisco Tellez ’25, and Henry Worden ’25.
Competition was fierce this year, and teams from a variety of prestigious institutions, including Princeton and Harvard, made strong presentations. Although the St. Lawrence team did not advance to the finals, they did the University proud, Bansak says. “Our students always have creative, non-vanilla policy recommendations, even though it’s typically pretty clear what the Fed will do. This year it was less obvious,” she explains.
Hill-Edgar attributes that, in part, to the unique liberal arts environment at St. Lawrence. “When you talk about a St. Lawrence liberal arts education, the whole point is to have all these different people with different skills and backgrounds come together,” he says. “That’s what happens with this challenge—students with talents in writing, data analysis, coding, and public speaking all came together.”
