Sokolov-Miller Family Center teaches students ‘how to live’

Budgeting. Debt management. Investing. Daad Rizk, director of the Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center at Penn State, is committed to empowering students with these critical tools. Beyond these skills, though, she hopes the students her center serves will walk away with a refined approach to life.

“Financial literacy is about knowing how to live the most beautiful life you can with the resources you have,” said Rizk. “We’re not here to teach students how to be rich. We’re here to teach students how to live.”

Rizk is teaching students “how to live” through the wide array of financial literacy programming she has developed from scratch since beginning her tenure in 2013. Along the way, her work has been shaped by lessons she’s learned from her own life, which has been defined by success despite scarcity. In honor of Financial Literacy Month in April, Rizk reflected on these connections.

Rizk grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, during the 1970s, as violence between political factions intensified and eventually erupted into the Lebanese Civil War. She explained that resources were scarce for her family, as they were for many: Rizk and her four siblings each had to make a single pair of shoes last an entire year, and their food was carefully rationed.

In the midst of war, the family learned how to make do with the little they had and to find sources of joy that didn’t cost a thing. Rizk fondly recalled days the family spent on the Mediterranean during intervals of peace, picnicking, swimming and enjoying each other’s company. 

“We learned to do without, and we led a happy life with what we had,” she said. “My experience taught me to make the most of life with limited resources.”

After Rizk’s home in Beirut was bombed, and the family immigrated to the United States, Rizk applied these lessons from her childhood to build a new life. With no money to her name, she earned degrees in economics and business administration from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, by working her way through school: waitressing, babysitting, cleaning homes and participating in the college’s work-study program. From there, she secured a staff position at Georgia Southern University and leveraged the school’s tuition remission benefit to earn a master of business administration and, ultimately, a doctorate of education in curriculum studies and foundations. Her experiences reaffirmed her belief that one can achieve success in life with limited resources through sound decision-making.

“I’m very proud that I overcame so many obstacles to get to where I am today,” said Rizk. “If I can find ways to knock down barriers and receive an education, then today’s students can, too.”

Having achieved a level of success herself, Rizk was in a position to share her wisdom with others. She did precisely this while working in Georgia Southern University’s financial aid, student accounts and bursar offices over 17 years. She saw firsthand the challenges students faced in paying for college, and she counseled students in financial literacy before this work had a name.

By the time financial literacy education did emerge as a distinct field in higher education, Rizk was prepared to make it her own. Following her tenure at Georgia Southern, Rizk moved to Los Angeles and briefly joined the private sector, but she missed higher education and was eager to return, she recalled. At the time, her only child, daughter Leila Derstine, was working for the Penn State Alumni Association and putting down roots in Happy Valley, so Rizk surveyed available opportunities at Penn State. When she saw that Outreach and Online Education was seeking a financial literacy manager, one of the first positions of its kind in higher education, she knew the job was made for her.

“The minute I saw the ad, I said, ‘That is my job!’ The position summarized everything I’d done in my professional life and my passion for working with students. I moved to State College even before I got the offer!”

The position gave Rizk the opportunity to build Penn State’s financial literacy program from the ground up. She single-handedly launched MoneyCounts: A Financial Literacy Series, which included workshops, presentations, webinars, first-year seminars and self-study modules designed to reach students at the University Park campus and across the Commonwealth, resident students as well as online learners.

Since then, Rizk has overseen tremendous growth of Penn State’s financial literacy program. In 2017, she became director of the newly founded Financial Literacy and Wellness Center housed in the Office of Undergraduate Education. Its profile heightened from being named a center, the program garnered a major gift from Penn State alumni Rick and Susan Sokolov the following year. The gift created the expanded and newly renamed Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center, with Rizk at the helm.

“It was like starting with a single seed and growing a huge tree that will be there forever,” said Rizk, as she reflected on the evolution of Penn State’s financial literacy program. “I feel like I’ve created a legacy behind me that I can feel so proud of.”

Today, the Sokolov-Miller Family Center offers one-on-one counseling with staff and student ambassadors, an expanded suite of self-study modules, and an alumni mentoring program, in addition to the MoneyCounts curriculum. Reflecting the philosophy of its director, this programming is teaching students not only how to make smart financial decisions, but how to live.

In honor of Financial Literacy Month, the Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center is hosting a range of online educational programming for the Penn State community and members of the public, including a panel discussion on “Investing for Young Women” on April 20. View the full list of available programming at financialliteracy.psu.edu/category/workshops.  

The Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center is part of Undergraduate Education, the academic administrative unit that provides leadership and coordination for University-wide programs and initiatives in support of undergraduate teaching and learning at Penn State. Learn more about Undergraduate Education at undergrad.psu.edu.