Description: Stefanos Orfanos shares his perspective and priorities for this year as the incoming chair of the SOA Education and Research Section.

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: We discuss an event that was hosted on the Georgia State University campus with the support of the Society of Actuaries. The purpose of the event was to introduce nearly 300 high school students, teachers and career counselors to the actuarial profession through presentations, an industry panel, and fun activities.

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: This article studies the syllabus as a dynamic, interactive teaching tool that informs and is informed by both solutions of complex course problems and student difficulties with these problems.

Description: Significant progress has been made in transforming the actuarial profession but it remains untransformed. Universities have been instrumental in training future actuaries and this article is about how the University of Cape Town has been addressing transformation in the actuarial program. The school system in South Africa has struggled to produce the required quality and quantity of school leavers prepared for higher education. This has led to universities having to develop ways to manage this problem. The article discusses the effectiveness of some of the initiatives introduced at UCT.

Description: A brief overview of last year's Education & Research Section Council work, accomplishments and challenges from its outgoing chair.