The Student Congress at Hope College is sponsoring the lecture "From Washington to Wall Street: Who is looking out for Main Street?" by Hope graduate Matt Scogin, who is a senior staff member with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and was formerly with the U.S. Treasury Department, on Monday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Maas Center auditorium.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
Scogin, who is vice president and chief of staff to the chief executive officer at the NYSE, will give his perspective on what needs to change in Washington and on Wall Street to advance a common economic good for the nation.
Scogin graduated from Hope in 2002 with majors in political science and economics. For the year after graduation, he served as a senior advisor for State Representative Barb Vander Veen in Lansing. He subsequently attended the graduate program in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., graduating with a Master's of Public Policy degree in 2005.
During 2005-06 he held a year-long research fellowship in Germany, sponsored by the Bosch Foundation, to study welfare reform and labor markets. He later joined the staff of the United States Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., serving as senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance. He has also worked previously for Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Wachovia Bank in Charlotte, N.C.
Scogin, who is originally from Portage, is himself a past member of the college's Student Congress, and served as the organization's president during 2000-01 and vice president during 1999-2000. He was involved in numerous other campus organizations and college activities as a student. During the spring of 2001, he held an internship in the Office of Political Affairs in the White House while participating in the college's Washington Honors Semester.
The Student Congress Speaker Series is planned and executed by student leaders elected as representatives of the student body. The series aims to supplement Hope's liberal arts curriculum with relevant, informative speakers of interest to students and community members.
The series debuted with author Alex Haley on Jan. 30, 1992. Others featured through the years have included actor Danny Glover and actor/director Felix Justice; comedian and talk show host Bertice Berry; author James Malinchak; former principal Joe Clark, inspiration for the film "Lean on Me"; attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on environmental issues; writer Maya Angelou; author Jack Thompson, a leading anti-entertainment industry litigator; author David Kushner; presidential speech writer and lawyer Ben Stein; peace activist Arun Gandhi; Robert Bullard, an expert on environmental justice and environmental racism; Cleve Jones, founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt; Paul Solman, a noted expert on domestic and international economics; actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr.; last year, Jane Elliott, who devised the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise in teaching about prejudice; and, on Feb. 22 this year, Jim Schneider concerning the current economic state and how to live with it.
The Maas Center is located at 264 Columbia Ave., on Columbia Avenue at 11th Street.