Description: This month, Expanding Horizons had the opportunity to interview Tim Boonen, the winner of the Society of Actuaries’ (SOA’s) second Actuarial Science Early Career Award.

Description: Risks is an international, scholarly, peer-reviewed, open access journal for research and studies on insurance and financial risk management. An upcoming special issue is aimed at bringing novel research on quantitative modeling and empirical findings in finance and risk management to a broad audience of academic researchers, industry professionals and regulators.

Description: This is the first article in the new "Fireside Chat" series which intends to honor highly accomplised academic actuaries and allow them to share their insights into academic careers with young scholars. This article is mainly based on an interview with Dr. Edward Frees (Jed), one of the most accomplished actuarial professors.

Description: In this article, we aim to outline the advantages of smaller programs and gather opinions on the challenges these programs face in their efforts to emphasize these strengths. For our purposes, we define small actuarial programs as those with a relatively low student enrollment count. The following are three key advantages of small programs, which are similar to those of small colleges:(a) Enhanced benefits from small class size; (b) Adaptable curriculum; (c) Increased opportunities for each student. A variety of similar other issues are also discussed with recommendations, challenges, and invitations for further dialogue.

Description: In this article, I give a few notes as the outgoing chair of the Education and Research Section Council.

Description: The article discusses the innovative integration of the SOA Research Challenge into the actuarial curriculum at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). This integration, part of the capstone course "Actuarial Theory and Practices," transforms the educational experience by focusing on hands-on problem-solving and mirroring professional actuarial work. Key topics covered include setting assumptions, understanding external environments, the modeling process, data quality, and risk management.