NDSU pursuing a new Center for Banking and Finance on campus

FARGO — North Dakota State University is establishing a new center that it says will strengthen partnerships with the financial sector and enhance opportunities for students.

The NDSU Center for Banking and Finance is past the exploratory step and is in the application phase for approval of the center, which requires laying out program details and funding.

The matter was on the State Board of Higher Education agenda for its meeting Dec. 4.

Kathryn Birkeland, dean of the NDSU College of Business, told The Forum she hopes to announce the hiring of a program director by Jan. 1, 2026, along with a corporate sponsor the same day or shortly thereafter.

“We are looking at a corporate sponsorship model that would fully fund the director position, the student engagement opportunities and the scholarships,” she said.

Birkeland said the new center will be similar to NDSU’s “very successful” Center for Professional Selling and Sales Technology, which also uses a corporate sponsorship model.

The university is looking to expand its banking and finance courses and provide more experiences for students through a two-step process.

“The first one is convincing our industry partners that there’s something of value here and they would like to participate. And then there’s the creation on the academic side that allows us to have a home to place those activities in,” she said.

According to Birkeland, NDSU College of Business graduates often say the most memorable part of the journey is interactions with executives and industry members and spending time at a financial institution through a job shadow or other experience.

Those experiences have not been offered in a consistent, cohesive manner, she said, but will become so with an established center.

“We know that the financial services industry, banking in particular, but also insurance and real estate and wealth management are changing pretty rapidly, so being able to offer our students essentially a real-time adjustment in what they’re getting in their programs is something we see as quite valuable,” she said.

The new center also hopes to work with the Bank of North Dakota in a goal toward financial literacy for all graduating students.

That could involve NDSU offering financial literacy courses that high school students could take for college credit, she said.

If all of the paperwork is submitted to the State Board of Higher Education by the end of this academic year, the NDSU Center for Banking and Finance should be ready to welcome students in the fall of 2026.

Huebner is a 35+ year veteran of broadcast and print journalism in Fargo-Moorhead.