Officials and faculty members in the Florida State University College of Business salute the Dr. William T. Hold/The National Alliance Program in Risk Management and Insurance as an example of the heights you can reach with an engaged, generous and visionary donor respected for excellence in his or her field.
Nearly a decade ago, Dr. William T. Hold and The National Alliance for Insurance Education and Research donated $5 million to the college to further build its highly ranked RMI program.
The program took on its current name, plus a new attitude and altitude – perennially ranking in the Top 5 in the country, including No. 4 in the 2024 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Hold, a 2012 inductee into the College of Business Alumni Hall of Fame, remains executive chairman of The National Alliance, which he co-founded.
“Dr. Hold allowed our RMI program to think bigger and to become even better,” said Michael Hartline, dean of the College of Business. “His gift, along with his name and the great organization he built, created a new posture and swagger in the program. It marked a vote of confidence that provided immediate recognition and credibility, and it gave us the money for our dedicated world-class faculty to start doing some truly great things.”
For starters, the program started providing scholarships and increased its support of professional development opportunities, including attendance at industry and educational conferences.
RMI students Christopher Ciganek and Blaine John took first place at the FSU Intercollegiate Insurance Sales Challenge in Tampa, Fla., an event that tests students’ sales skills and knowledge of the insurance industry.
The program also has inspired continued growth of Insurance Days, its annual job- and internship-placement event for RMI majors.
“Everybody wants to be associated with a winner,” said Kathleen McCullough, the college’s senior associate dean for academic affairs and the Kathryn Magee Kip Professor in Risk Management and Insurance. “Dr. Hold and the naming of the program helped solidify that winner mentality, and other people joined the cause and the fight.”
World-renowned faculty members include Charles Nyce, the Dr. William T. Hold Associate Professor of Risk Management & Insurance and chair of the Department of Risk Management/Insurance, Real Estate and Legal Studies. He remains a highly pursued expert on Florida’s homeowners insurance crisis, especially in the wake of Hurricane Idalia, and has appeared in reports from Time magazine, Bloomberg and Fox Weather, among others.
The program also boasts Patricia Born, the Payne H. & Charlotte Hodges Midyette Eminent Scholar in Risk Management and Insurance; the director of the Ph.D. Program with a major in RMI; and an expert in liability, insurance regulation, health insurance and catastrophe modeling. The RMI program prepares future insurance and risk management professionals in the areas of enterprise risk management; financial planning; employee benefits; life and health insurer operations and products; and property and casualty operations and products.
Cassandra Cole, the Robert L. Atkins Professor in Risk Management and Insurance and director of the college’s highly ranked online Master of Science in Risk Management and Insurance (MS-RMI), hails the overall RMI program as one in the few in the U.S. that offers degrees in risk management and insurance at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels.
Graduates get jobs as insurance agents and brokers, underwriters, claims adjusters and risk analysts, among others. Students who double-major in areas such as finance, real estate and actuarial science have been securing positions at organizations including consulting companies and investment firms, Cole said.
-- Pete Reinwald
