UA Faculty Member Spending Summer at the Federal Reserve

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Laura Reynolds, assistant professor of consumer sciences in the College of Human Environmental Sciences at The University of Alabama, is serving this summer as a Visiting Scholar for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. Reynolds is working in the Consumer and Community Affairs division.

“This is an amazing opportunity for research and networking,” said Reynolds. “The research topics I will be working on this summer focus mainly on consumer credit card use and disclosure information, as well as consumer financial literacy and education,” she said.

Already this summer Reynolds has attended several legislative briefings and council meetings, and she plans to attend a meeting of the National Forum to Encourage Lower-Income Household Savings.

Reynolds’ role in this summer’s research originated after she met Jeanne Hogarth, a program manager for the C&CA, when Hogarth was a guest lecturer at CHES’s Orman-Harris Lecture on the UA campus.

The UA College of Human Environmental Sciences, established in 1917, offers degree programs for rewarding careers in apparel and textile, athletic training, consumer sciences, early childhood development, financial planning and counseling, food and nutrition, family and consumer science education, health studies, human development and family studies and interior design.