The University of Northern Colorado’s Chief Financial Officer, Dale Pratt, was the AVID senior class’ most recent guest speaker. He spoke with the students on March 5th.
Pratt, who is in the Sociology Mastesr’s Program at UNC, met AVID senior teacher Ms. Lea Sanford in one of his classes. In class, Sanford mentioned being a teacher at Greeley West, so she invited Pratt to come talk about the students about his role at UNC and what he knows about the university and college experience
Pratt enjoyed coming to talk to students about financial topics, as he thinks the students benefitted from what was said at the speech since it could apply to every student, and the challenges they are about to face. Pratt shared that students should be ready to explore and step out of their comfort zone, and that students should be ready to face the whole world, not just what is in front of them so they arent limited. He wants every student to be ready for the real world since opportunities can be scarce. Pratt’s main focus was that every student should take advantage of all the opportunities that are presented to them. “Start with the whole world, think about where I wanna go and what I wanna do and narrow it down from there, don’t start with whats in front of you, in a limitied vision of what your opportunities are, start with the big picture the whole world is possible,” Pratt said.
Senior Omari Edwards was one of the students present, and he asked many questions and was left satisfied from that hearing, as he asked many questions and many were answered. Edwarrds learned many new things, One of those things was how to invest money at early age, and he learned how to be wise with his money. He also learned the importance of scholarships and how it makes college not seem as expensive. “I learned that you should invest at a early age and stocks are really important because you buy a portion of the company and as their worth goes up your money does too,” Edwards said.
Senior AVID teacher Julie Hagemeister believes that guest speakers like Pratt are important for senior AVID students because it helps prepare them for college, as they get to meet people that are like them or different to them so they are able to hear different perspectives. Hagemeister hopes that Pratt made the students understand that college does make you successful. “I hope that they learned that you can come from a lot of different backgrounds and that sometimes college is what makes you successful,” Hagemeister said.
