With the spring semester approaching, many students plan to graduate and enter their careers. Before they leave, they might consider taking one of the most important classes at AU that isn’t required. Of all the challenges new graduates face, one of the most complex is matters of personal financial. Dr. Jerry Fox teaches a course in personal financial planning, which helps students set financial goals within their particular career field’s salary. Although this is his favorite course to teach, Fox’s contributions to the students are far more influential than just helping them achieve a sense of fiscal responsibility.

Fox is a Professor of Management at the Falls School of Business. His range of teaching includes both undergraduate and graduate classes, but he is also very committed to “kicking students off campus.” That is, getting them off campus and into internships. Fox is also the Director of the Internship Program at FSB, and has helped countless students get the experience they need to excel in the business world. “One of the things we emphasize is not only scholarship in the classroom, but we’re more interested in students gaining practice in their field and interaction with professionals who are currently in those fields,” Fox said. As the Director of Internship Program, Fox’s responsibilities include working with contacts to organize the internship and to help find ways to give students academic credit for the internship. But in order to give the students the opportunity to experience real-world business conditions, finding the internship is totally up to the students. Through Fox’s guidance, students have worked on internships with Proctor & Gamble, Indiana Pacers, various banks and accounting firms, hospitals, church compliance firms, and non-profit organizations, such as the United Way.

For Fox, being a part of Anderson University runs in the family. His grandfather came to AU in 1919, and his parents continued the tradition during the 1950s. Growing up with his father as a minister, Fox noticed that many of the problems his father’s parishioners dealt with concerned money. He decided, with a little guidance from a local banker with whom he had worked, that he wanted to serve others through helping them practice business with excellence. Fox graduated in 1979 with a major in accounting and then moved on to complete his M.B.A. at Indiana University. While going to IU, he taught at AU and continued on after he finished his M.B.A. He officially joined the full-time faculty in 1985 and since that time has been helping to increase the scope of the business department since then.

The university’s commitment to Christian experience also has an effect on Fox’s work, although he makes an important distinction: “There’s really no such thing as Christian business study. There are Christian people with the commitments that they bring teaching those disciplines. So out of our commitment to Christ and our desire to be as complete in Him as possible, we teach with a commitment to seeking out the truth, knowing it as well as possible and living that out in a way that would honor Christ as well as be a blessing to other people.” As he continues to teach, Fox’s mission is to help students realize the importance of doing all things as unto the Lord, whether in the field of business or simply just balancing the checkbook.