Maurice M. MacDonald and Stuart J. Heckman have joined the Manhattan faculty of personal financial planning this fall, and Roxanne Martens and George Belin have joined the Salina faculty.
They bring the total number of full-time faculty members to nine. The program has three part-time faculty members.
The School of Family Studies and Human Services also welcomed Dorothy (Dottie) Bagwell Durband as director.
MacDonald, who was director of the School of Family Studies and Human Services from 2009 to 2014, is an expert in the economics of family. He will serve as major professor for doctoral and master’s thesis students, and will teach Introduction to Personal Financial Planning, Retirement Planning and Investment Planning.
The professor received doctorate and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Michigan, and has authored numerous book chapters, articles and technical reports pertaining to the economics of welfare and food assistance.
Stuart J. Heckman, assistant professor, received a Ph.D. in family resource management from Ohio State University and a bachelor’s degree in personal financial planning from K-State in 2011. A Certified Financial Planner™, he worked for eight years in the financial planning profession.
He will teach Introduction to Personal Financial Planning, Advanced Personal Financial Planning, Retirement Planning, and Insurance Planning in the undergraduate program.
Heckman’s research interests have focused upon financial decision-making and financial wellness among college students, young adults, and low income households. His dissertation, Consumer Risk Preferences and Higher Education Enrollment Decisions, examined how consumer risk preferences influence the decision to invest in higher education.
Martens joined the permanent faculty in Salina after serving in a temporary role for a year. She and Belin offer a full personal financial planning undergraduate curriculum on the Salina campus.
Durband joined the College of Human Ecology July 1. She was founding chair of the community, family and addiction services department in the College of Human Services at Texas Tech University, has been named director of the School of Family Studies and Human Services, effective July 1, 2014.
She was a professor in the personal financial planning department at Texas Tech in Lubbock and founding director of Red to Black, the financial coaching program at the university. An accredited financial counselor, she has been a manager for the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Fort Worth and of the Gulf Coast Area in Texas.