Husky Tracks
FINANCIAL FEEN
With a Social Security crisis looming and Medicare
flirting with insolvency, the financial future of many of the nation's
young people appears to be in jeopardy. But Carl Feen, BA'62, is giving
Connecticut public school students a ray of hope.
Feen is credited with originating legislation that governor John Rowland
signed into law recently. The new bill establishes a financial-planning
curriculum in the state's public schools-the first such law to be passed
in the country.
"I think it's important that children learn about saving at an
early age," says Feen, a financial planner. "When I was in grammar
school, we used to have banking [classes]. The banker would come to school
once a week, and we would save a dollar, a quarter, or fifty cents. It
was because of those savings that I was able to go to college."
School districts throughout the state now have the option to adopt the
new curriculum. Where it is approved, Connecticut high school students
will be taught a course in financial planning, while grammar school students
will get general instruction on money-related issues. Feen and fellow experts
from CIGNA Corporation, his employer for more than thirty years, will help
design the courses and train the teachers in financial management.
Feen finds the level of financial knowledge among today's young people
alarmingly low, particularly regarding retirement savings. "We have
a high proportion of people out there who do not know the difference between
a stock and a bond and what the expected rates of return are," he
says. Statistics show that young workers are not preparing for retirement
as they should: eighteen percent of people aged 18 to 24 are saving in
401(k) plans, compared to fifty-one percent of people 40 to 49 years old.
A high percentage of women and minorities do not participate in their employer's
pension plans.
Feen credits much of his own success in business to a course he took
at Northeastern: a five-week elective on the basics of finance and investment,
which he says helps him even today. He went on to become the highest-paid
co-op student in Northeastern's history to that point, hiring more than
150 students to sell magazines for him.
A 1981 recipient of the Erwin Story alumni award, Feen until recently
was vice chairman of the national Advisory Council on Employee and Pension
Benefits Plans, a fifteen-member group appointed by former U.S. labor secretary
Robert Reich to advise him on preventing a national pension crisis.
With advertising luring young people to spend instead of save, Feen
says the need is greater now than ever for teens to plan for their retirement.
"This course on money management is something that will stay with
them when they become adults and go out into the real world," he says.
- Meghan Irons
ON THE ROAD, ON THE CUTTING EDGE
When artist and graphic designer Lyn Bishop traveled,
seeking creative inspiration in unfamiliar places and peoples, she used
to adhere to the tradition of scribbling sketches and then returning home
to the studio to finish the artwork. No longer. Now she takes her studio
on the road and creates art at the site.
On a recent trip to China to study ancient art and culture, she carried
a backpack filled with digital design equipment and captured her inspirations
immediately and spontaneously. The result: a collection of limited-edition
fine art prints and a companion World Wide Web site that features a gallery
of digital art, photographs, and animated panoramas, which can be viewed
at <www.zama.com/ontheroad>. Her Web site, titled "A Digital
Artist: On the Road in China," has been featured on CNN Headline News
and CNN.com and in several magazines and newspapers.
"Trying to capture the moment of inspiration, trying to let it
come as it happened-that's really what it was about, and the tools helped
me to do that," says the thirty-four-year-old Sunnyvale, California,
resident.
As the owner and creative director of Zama Online Design, an illustration,
graphic design, and Web development company in Silicon Valley, Bishop frequently
uses computerized design tools. On her regular trips to Asia, she found
herself wishing her studio was at hand whenever a creative spark was struck,
and came up with the idea of a portable studio.
She pitched the concept to several hardware and software
manufacturers. Companies such as Apple Computer, Olympus America, and Alien
Skin Software agreed to donate products and services. Bishop's medium-sized
backpack, containing a powerful laptop computer, digital camera, graphics
tablet, and software, weighed only thirteen pounds.
She took to the streets of China for eighteen days last summer, exploring
the Forbidden City in Beijing, caves in Hunan province, and villages in
Anhui province. Rather than focusing on standard postcard images, she emphasized
simple, small things, such as green onions in a basket or a bundle of twigs.
"I found so much inspiration in China," she says. "I
found it was great to have the tools because I was able to capture those
inspirations much better than with a regular film camera." The digital
camera and laptop gave instant feedback; seeing pictures immediately on
screen allowed greater spontaneity and creativity. Each day was an experiment,
she says. "The [digital] camera was an amazing tool for capturing
[images] and keeping them fresh in my mind."
Bishop's degree from Northeastern was in business administration rather
than art. Immediately after graduating in 1987, she executed a business
plan that she had drafted her senior year, starting a company called Cosmic
Colors, which specialized in hand-dyed and painted fabrics. She moved to
California in 1989 and has spent the past ten years working as a digital
artist. She intends "On the Road in China" to be the first in
a series of projects born of her travels with the portable studio.
- Meghan Irons
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