Dec 01, 2025

Doctoral student Ravisha Chutani (Co-authors: Drs. Kimberly Watkins, John Grable, and Laura Lu (college of education)) received the CFP Board Best Paper Award at the 2025 CFP Board-AFS Annual meeting, Chicago, IL for their paper “Understanding the Impact of Family Financial Socialization and Financial Capability on Financial Wellbeing Across Generations: Practical Insights for Financial Planners.”
Doctoral students Mary Akinde (Co-Major Professors: Drs. Patryk Babiarz and Diann Moorman) and Catherine Asiimwe (Major Professor: Dr. Lance Palmer) received the UGA Graduate School Graduate Degree Accelerator Awards.
Doctoral student Yeqi Zhu (Co-author and Mentor: Dr. Lu Fan) also received her best paper award at the 2025 AFCPE Conference, Phoenix-Glendale AZ for their paper entitled “Buy now, pay later: A roadblock to financial well-being” 
The Financial Resilience Education Center (FRC) Renovation Celebration event this past November was a huge success. Over 80 attendees participated in this event, including Provost Ben Ayers, FACS Dean Dr. Anisa Zvonkovic, Associate Dean of Extension Dr. Allisen Penn, Financial Planning Legacy Leaders Charles Schwab Foundation, Signature FD, Schorn Wealth, HB Wealth, and Bluerock Wealth Management among others. Congratulations to Dr. Lance Palmer, Melissa McBride, Jessica Mangum, Sonja Halder, Casey Cane, Suzanne Griffeth, Dr. Michael Thomas and the Student Financial Planning Association (SFPA) student leaders for helping put together this tremendous event. Huge thank you to our FHCE faculty including Drs. Effie Antonoudi, Megan Ford, Joe Goetz, Wil Golden, Deborah Lacey, Travis Mountain, Anne Sweaney, Pamela Turner, and Kimberly Watkins, for participating in this celebration along with several of our amazing doctoral, Master’s, and undergraduate students, alumni, and other supporters and stakeholders at this event.
Doctoral student Juan S (Sebastian) Sandoval published his co-authored paper in the International Journal of Bank Marketing.
 In the news…
 Dr. Megan Ford was featured in the New York Times Article “Why Some People Don’t Talk About Money With Their Partner.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/your-money/finances-budget-relationships-partner.html
Dr. Dee Warmath helped develop the Georgia Health Landscape Dashboard, a tool to identify local health gaps, and connect regional health professionals or policymakers with researchers along with Dr. Alsion Berg of Nutritional Sciences and Jon Duke (Ga Tech). Dr. Warmath’s work was featured in the Gatech News and @UGAResearch:
https://news.gatech.edu/news/2025/11/24/clean-old-fashioned-collaboration-engineering-future-healthcare-georgia-tech-and
https://research.uga.edu/news/clean-old-fashioned-collaboration-engineering-the-future-of-health-care-at-uga-georgia-tech/
Other news…
Dr. Michael Thomas led the Financial Planning Quiz Bowl team to the 2025 AFCPE Conference held at Phoenix-Glendale, AZ this past November.
Several graduate students including Nayeon Kim, Francisco Diaz, and Katrina Goudelock presented their research at the 2025 HERA Conference, Blacksburg, VA this past November. Several FHCE Faculty including Prof. Sherle Brown, Drs. Andy Carswell, Sharon Kane, Diann Moorman, and Kim Skobba also presented their papers at the HERA conference.
Several graduate students including Yeqi Zhu (paper award winner; Mentor/Co-author Dr. Lu Fan), Kiana Drummond, Charlotte Ingram, and Lindsay Mapes) also presented their papers at the 2025 AFCPE Symposium, Phoenix-Glendale, AZ this past November. Financial Planning faculty members including Drs. Effie Antonoudi, and Lu Fan also presented their research at the AFCPE symposium.
Doctoral student Lin Sun (Major prof. Dr. Patryk Babiarz) presented her paper at the 2025 Southern Economic Association (SEA) Annual conference in Tampa Florida last month.
Doctoral student Lindsay Mapes (co-author: Dr. Patryk Babiarz) presented her paper at the 72nd North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International in Denver, CO last month.
Doctoral student Kiana Drummond (Major prof. Dr. Lance Palmer) was invited to present her co-authored paper at the 2025 Personal Finance and Investment Symposium, Perth, Australia.
Doctoral students Lindsay Mapes and Yeqi Zhu also presented their papers in the Graduate Seminar class in November.
The inaugural meeting of the Financial Planning Advisory Council was held following the FRC Renovation Center launch. The inaugural committee members include alumni Richard Zulick (Morgan Stanley), Tom Schorn (Schorn Wealth), and Raj Chokshi (Bluerock Wealth). The meeting was also attended by FACS Dean Dr. Anisa Zvonkovic and FACS Senior Director of Development Suzanne Griffeth.
The 2025 Fall RPM Career Night was a huge success. Thank you professor Sherle Brown, and Melissa McBride for making this happen. And thank you to Drs. Kim Skobba, Anne Sweaney, and Suzanne Griffeth for being there. Many thanks to Aimee Dowd from the FACS SSAC for promoting the major at this event. Huge thanks to the H.O.U.S.E student officers for their participation and help with this event, and thank you to our amazing Housing Management and Policy-Residential Property Management students for their participation.
Alumna Dr. Yu (Yulia) Zhang of Kansas State University presented her work (virtually) to the students in the Graduate Seminar Class last month.
Research
Ming, S., Maietta, J. E., Ranum, R. M., Hermann, G., Murriel, E. C., Block, C., Watkins, K., & Kiselica, A. M. (2025). Practical considerations for job application, interview, and negotiation in clinical neuropsychology. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803395.2025.2565213
“This manuscript developed a narrative review of considerations for prospective employment in neuropsychology. This study provides a summary of factors to consider in job selection and negotiation in clinical neuropsychology in multiple settings, including the topics of compensation, benefits, and productivity expectations. Overall, the manuscript provides an overview of critical topics for early career success in clinical neuropsychology that could be incorporated into graduate and post-doctoral training curricula.”
Piehlmaier, D.M., Warmath, D. (2025). The challenge of explicit learning in life skill education. npj Sci. Learn. 10, 87. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-025-00375-6.
“Curriculum design in programs to build life skills often focuses on explicit learning methods that aim to increase declarative knowledge. However, this type of education has been shown to have minimal impact on behavior. We introduce a continuum of knowledge and argue that more flexible forms of knowledge are required to impact behavior, especially for novices. Using a randomized controlled trial conducted over several sessions, this study explores the ability of semi-flexible and flexible knowledge to promote optimal behaviors in the context of personal finances. We found that as knowledge became more flexible, desired changes in actual behavior became more likely. Our results provide evidence that life skills education programs, such as collegiate financial education, may be “barking up the wrong tree” with the focus on explicit learning. Expanding program design to incorporate a focus on flexible knowledge may improve the impact of such programs on desired behavior.”
Sandoval, J. S., Collazos-Ortiz, M. A., Sarmiento-Sabogal, J., & Cayon-Fallon, E. (2025). Financial knowledge and financial behavior: evidence from five Latin American countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-09-2024-0567
“This study finds an association between financial knowledge and comparing financial products before acquiring them, and a negative relationship with overspending. Regarding seeking financial advice, the association was negative for the objective measure and positive for the subjective measure. The results also indicate that COVID-19 led to more precautionary behaviors among those with higher financial knowledge. However, there is considerable variation by country, both before and during the pandemic, suggesting that structural factors influence these relationships.”

Nov 25, 2025

Congratulations
Doctoral student Lin Sun (mentor: Dr. Patryk Babiarz) received the 2025 Jan M. Hathcote Social Science Academic Support Award for her project entitled: “Trust in the Machine: Decoding Consumer Acceptance of AI-Generated Financial Advice from LLMs”
Doctoral student Xiaoyuan Sun (co-author: Dr. Swarn Chatterjee) on receiving a best poster award at the 2025 AFS CFP Board CFPConnections25 Conference in Chicago, IL.
Doctoral student Kiana Drummond on being invited to present her paper entitled “Beyond the refund: Modeling client experience, satisfaction, and financial well-being changes in a VITA program” (co-authors: USDA Higher Education Challenge grant team led by Drs. Lance Palmer, Travis Mountain, Wil Golden, and Swarn Chatterjee; and doctoral students Catherine Asiimwe and Ruchika Bansal) at the AFS Australia New Zealand Chapter Personal Finance and Investment Symposium in Perth Australia. Kiana’s paper was selected based on her poster presentation on the same topic at the 2025 CFP Connections conference in Chicago, Illinois this past October.
Dr. Kimberly Watkins has been accepted as a faculty affiliate of the UGA Love and Money Center
Dr. Joseph Goetz on receiving the Distinguished Leadership Award from Texas Tech University School of Financial Planning
Dr. John Grable was recognized for his service at the Academy of Financial Services Awards ceremony in the 2025 CFP Board Connections Conference, Chicago, IL.
Dr. Yilang Peng has become the Associate Editor for Communication and the Public Journal. Https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ctp 
Drs. Lance Palmer, Travis Mountain, and Wil Golden on receiving the Gifted Savings funding to evaluate financial literacy and investment behavior of high school students.
Dr. Dee Warmath has been selected to be one of the inaugural UGA faculty innovation fellows. Dr. Warmath’s and Inaugural Faculty Innovation Fellows’ works were featured on UGA TODAY.
In the news…
Nearly 100 students signed up for the Evening with Caleb Silver event. Caleb Silver is the editor-in-chief of Investopedia and shared his insights on AI and the future opportunities for Financial Planning, and the tremendous opportunities for students graduating from our program. Thank you Dr. Michael Thomas for hosting the Q&A panel and Dr. Kimberly Watkins for leading this event!
Drs. Kristy Archuleta and John Grable were interviewed and featured in an article on wallethub.com on the topic entitled "What is Loud Budgeting?"
Dr. John Grable was invited to speak at the Financial Planning Association meeting in Spokane, Washington.
Dr. Michael Thomas was invited to be present on a panel of experts discussing Real World Assets (RWAs) at the 3rd Annual Lehman College Digital Assets Conference in NYC, NY.
Other news…
First year doctoral student Marty Sowards represented UGA at the 2025 Utah Valley University Financial Planning Career Fair in Orem Utah this past October.
Over 238 students attended the 2025 FHCE Fall Career Fair setting a new record! 30 firms participated in this event! Huge thanks to prof. Sherle Brown for helping us plan this event!
The Financial Planning Alumni Group event that followed the Career Fair was also well attended. Thank you Drs. Effie Antonoudi, Joseph Goetz, Lance Palmer, Megan Ford Michael Thomas, Kimberly Watkins and other faculty members whose names I may have missed for all your support.
The RPM Board meeting that followed in the evening of the FHCE Career Fair was another success. Thank you professor Sherle Brown making this happen. And thank you to Drs. Andy Carswell and Pamela Turner and other faculty members whose name I may have missed for being there.
Thank you Melissa Mcbride, Jessica Mangum, and Sonja Halder for all your help with these events!
Dr. Brenda Cude has been busy! Currently, she is consulting with Healthy DC, the District of Columbia's Health Insurance Marketplace, to improve their consumer communications, including their website. Next week, she will speak at the International Association of Insurance Supervisors in Tirana, Albania, on the topic of keeping insurance affordable and valued by customers. And, in December Dr. Cude will attend the Consumer Federation of America's Financial Services Conference, participating in a panel discussion. The topic is "Tech Comes to the Insurance Market: The Opportunities and Pitfalls Facing Industry, Regulators, and Consumers." In September, Dr. Cude presented “Words that work: Clearer consumer messaging” to 200 participants at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners Insurance Summit in Kansas City, MO. She also chaired a panel on Aging and Long-Term Care at the same conference and presented a paper with Sharon Tennyson of Cornell University titled “Consumer insurance literacy: Evidence from a survey of homeowners insurance purchasers” at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners Center for Insurance Policy and Research Regulatory Research Symposium, also in Kansas City, MO.
Drs. Effie Antonoudi, John Grable, Joseph Goetz, Kimberly Watkins, Kristy Archuleta, Lance Palmer, Lu Fan, and Travis Mountain participated in the panel for our doctoral students in the seminar class this past October.
Dr. Yunhee Chang, University of Mississippi, presented her research on natural disasters and credit use to the doctoral students in the Seminar class in October.
Research
Daniels, I. M., Hollar, D. L., McCoy, M., & Watkins, K. (2025). Relationships between financial well-being and resiliency: evidence from law enforcement. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 1-21.
“This study investigates how ego-resiliency (ER) and bounce-back resilience (BBR) relate to financial well-being/distress (FWBD) among law enforcement officers. Results show that both ego-resilience and bounce-back resilience are positively and additively associated with financial well-being, suggesting that the capacity to recover from adversity and the proclivity for context-appropriate behavioral impulse control are related to perceived financial health. The law enforcement context enhances the relevance of this study to society, as officers operate under high-stress conditions and are authorized by governments to engage the public in consequential ways. Identifying financial well-being as a correlate of stress-coping resources has implications for the psychological well-being of officers and the health of their interactions with the broader public. This study contributes to the literature of financial well-being by establishing relationships to previously underexplored psychological correlates. Furthermore, this study examines financial well-being in an occupational sample. Such samples are underexplored in the literature.”
Reiter, M., Jurgenson, J. B., McCoy, M., Watkins, K., White, K., & Warmath, D. (2025). Evaluating the Klontz Money Script Inventory-Revised (KMSI-R): Factorial Validity, Internal Consistency, and Measurement Invariance with a Diverse Sample. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 1-13.
“The Klontz Money Script Inventory-Revised (KMSI-R) is a widely used scale that assesses individuals’ money scripts or beliefs. This study examines the factorial validity, internal consistency (i.e., reliability), and measurement invariance of the KMSI-R using a diverse sample of respondents. Using a proprietary dataset with a final sample of 2686 respondents, the authors found that the measurement’s internal consistency was reasonable for all items. However, factorial validity was not supported, with poor fit indices for the four-factor model (X2(458) = 3912.96, RMSEA = .053, CFI = .762, TLI = .742). Improvements in fit were observed after removing items with low loadings and applying theoretically relevant modifications (X2(96) = 610.249, RMSEA = .045, CFI = .930, TLI = .912). Measurement invariance across racial and ethnic groups was not supported. The findings suggest that the KMSI-R needs significant revision before it can be used with diverse populations.”
Zhang, Y., & Chatterjee, S. (2025). Overconfidence and portfolio return expectations: The mediating role of option trading behavior. Economics Bulletin, 45(3), 1283-1296.
“This paper investigates the role of overconfidence in investment knowledge on higher investment portfolio return expectations, with a focus on the mediating role of option trading behavior among individual American investors. The findings show that overconfidence was consistently associated with an increased likelihood of engaging in option trading behavior and holding the belief that one's investment portfolio returns were superior to the market average. The mediation analysis further reveals that overconfidence mediated by actively participating in options trading, may result in investors' positive perception of their portfolio performance.”

Oct 30, 2025

October 2025 Just So You Know…
Congratulations
Doctoral student Mary Akinde (co-chairs: Drs. Diann Moorman and Patryk Babiarz) successfully defended her portfolio.
Master’s student Sonika Chan passed Part 1 of her IRS Enrolled Agent exam.
Drs. Effie Antonoudi and Travis Mountain were investigators in the $6.2 million “Elevating Couple Relationships Across Georgia” grant that was recently funded by the HHS. The project is led by Dr. Ted Futris from HDFS department.
Dr. Dee Warmath was part of an inter-disciplinary team that was recently awarded the UGA Engineering and Computing Convergence Collaboration (EC3) Innovations internal grant for $10,000.
Dr. Michael Thomas has been accepted as a faculty affiliate of the UGA Love and Money Center
 In the news…
Dr. Yilang Peng and his research was featured on UGA TODAY.
Drs. Effie Antonoudi and Michael Thomas were quoted in articles by WalletHub.
Other news…
Drs. Kristy Archuleta, John Grable, Kimberly Watkins, and Megan Ford along with several of our graduate students volunteered in providing financial education sessions for the Virtual Pro Bono Financial Planning Day.
Dr. Olivia Valdes of FINRA presented to our doctoral students and faculty about the new 2024 wave of the FINRA National Financial Capability Study that was launched earlier this year.
Drs. Daehwan Ahn, Patryk Babiarz, Jermaine Durham, Sharon Kane, Yilang Peng, and  Dee Warmath discussed research with graduate students in the doctoral seminar class in September.
In the past few months Dr. Brenda Cude was invited to make presentations and share her expertise on topics that ranged from consumer interest literacy, aging and long-term care, to homeowners insurance:
The Fall 2025 edition of the UGA Financial Planning Connections Event took place this past September.
Research
Jeong, D., & Babiarz, P. (2025). Willingness to Take Financial Risks and Portfolio Choice: The Moderating Role of Financial Planners' Advice. Financial Planning Review, 8(3), e70007.
“Individuals with the lowest self-reported risk tolerance were significantly more likely to invest in stocks and allocate a larger share of their financial assets to equities when they received advice from a financial planner. But, for individuals with high risk tolerance, the use of a financial planner was associated with a reduction in the proportion of financial wealth allocated to directly held stocks. However, for households with moderate to high risk tolerance, financial planner use still increased risky asset allocation.’’

Sep 05, 2025

Congratulations

Dr. Sharon Kane has been accepted as an affiliate at the Owens Institute of Behavioral Research (OIBR).

FHCE alumna Stacy Jones became UGA’s fifth Vice President for Public Service and Outreach (PSO).

Dr. John Grable has been accepted as a faculty affiliate of the UGA Love and Money Center

 In the news…

Dr. Brenda Cude’s research on insurance fraud was featured in UGA TODAY.

https://www.wuga.org/local-news/2025-09-02/young-adults-more-likely-to-tolerate-insurance-fraud

Dr. Cude has also published recently on this topic with her co-author Hanchun Zhang in the Journal of Consumer Affairs.

Cude, B. J., & Zhang, H. (2025). Factors That Influence Willingness to Commit Insurance Fraud. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 59(2), e70015. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joca.70015

Other news…

Prof. Sherle Brown organized the UGA RPM alumni panel to come and talk to the students in her class. The panel comprised of the following alumni:

As part of her 2025 UGA ASPIRE Leadership Program project Dr. Lu Fan has developed The Financial Health Laboratory. The goal of this laboratory is to advance interdisciplinary research on financial literacy, capability, decision-making, and well-being. Through research, education, and outreach, the lab seeks to empower individuals and families to improve financial health and well-being. https://www.fcs.uga.edu/fhce/financial-health-laboratory

Doctoral student Lin Sun’s paper was accepted for presentation at the 2025 Southern Economic Association’s conference.

Doctoral student Ravisha Chutani and co-authors Drs. John Grable, Kimberly Watkins, and Zhenqiu Lu will be presenting their paper at the 2025 CFP® Connections Conference in Chicago, IL in October, 2025. Ravisha also presented her her paper at the 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition in Montreal, Quebec, Canada this past summer:

Chutani, R., & Kathpalia, V., & Morelock, J. R. (2025, June), Impact of financial anxiety and financial stress on the financial well-being of engineering graduate students in the United States.   

Drs. Kristy Archuleta and Kimberly Watkins will be presenting at the 2025 CFP® Connections conference, Chicago, IL in October, 2025.

Research

If you have any news items or current research you would like included in Just So You Know…. please email Swarn Chatterjee. Just So You Know…. is now available at https://www.fcs.uga.edu/fhce/just-so-you-know.

For more program updates, follow me on Linked In.

Cude, B. J., & Zhang, H. (2025). Factors That Influence Willingness to Commit Insurance Fraud. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 59(2), e70015. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joca.70015

Insurance fraud increases premiums for all U.S. households and undermines the insurer/insured relationship. This article examines willingness to commit insurance fraud using data from an online survey completed by 1505 U.S. adults and analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis. Roughly one-half of the sample would never commit any of the nine types of insurance fraud in the survey. Fewer than 20% (17.2%) of the respondents said they had committed at least one of the types of fraud. Both of the moral intensity variables were significant, but the signs were opposite. Moral Intensity PC1 (Magnitude of Consequences, Probability of Effect, Temporal Immediacy, and Concentration of Effect) was negatively related to willingness to commit insurance fraud, while Moral Intensity PC2 (Social Consensus and Proximity) was positively related. Peer acceptance was significantly and positively related to willingness to commit insurance fraud, while the relationship with the belief that insurance fraud is a crime was negative. Several control variables were significant, including age; older respondents were significantly less likely to be willing to commit insurance fraud than younger respondents. The article concludes by discussing future directions for research and practical implications for consumer educators.

Yang, T., Yang, X., Peng, Y., & Mukerjee, S. (2025). Are partisan, unreliable, digital-born, and mass-oriented media more likely to thrive on social media? Comparing four information ecosystems. Journal of Communication. https://academic.oup.com/joc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/joc/jqaf035/8246330

Abstract. Social media platforms form information ecosystems distinct from the Web and reconfigure power relationships, especially the distribution of visibilities, among news media. We developed a theoretical framework based on structuration theory to explain the differences between the Web and social media, and investigated four prominent factors: institutional legacy, information reliability, ideological differences, and news inequalities. This study collected social media data from three platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; N = 8.4 million posts), web traffic data, and an information reliability index for 766 media outlets in the USA. We investigated how four factors explained differences between the platforms and the Web: media outlets that were digital-born (compared to newspapers), partisan, and mass-oriented gained greater visibilities on platforms relative to their web traffic. Meanwhile, the three platforms displayed differences. For example, only Twitter showed significantly increased visibilities of unreliable sources. Our multiplatform research design demonstrates the impact of platformization on journalism.

Aug 25, 2025

New Graduate Coordinator Assistant Jessica Pritchard Mangum. Jessica started on her role as the Graduate Coordinator Assistant for FHCE from June 30th, 2025.

New Financial Planning Lecturer Wil Golden. Wil Golden who has been running the UGA Financial Planning VITA program for the past few years with Drs. Lance Palmer and Travis Mountain, was hired as the new lecturer for FHCE starting Fall 2025.

Congratulations

FACS and FHCE received substantial funding from Charles Schwab to support the expansion and renovation of our infrastructure to support the Center for Financial Resilience and Education that is currently led by Dr. Lance Palmer, along with Dr. Travis Mountain, and Prof. Wil Golden.

Doctoral Candidate Jia Qi (Committee: Drs. Swarn Chatterjee, Kristy Archuleta and Sheri Worthy) successfully defended his dissertation this summer.

Doctoral student Catherine Asiimwe on being selected to participate in the Financial Literacy Research Boot Camp 2025 at Stanford University, June 23-27, 2025 that was led by Dr. Annamaria Lusardi and her colleagues at Stanford. Doctoral students Xiaoyuan Sun and Yeqi Zhu attended the 2025 University of Michigan ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods (virtually) this past summer.

Doctoral student Juha Lee (Mentor Faculty Dr. Dee Warmath) received the 2025 Liam Glynn Scholarship from the SERVSIG and the Center for Service Leadership at Arizona State University, and presented her research in the Doctoral Consortium of the Frontiers in Service Conference hosted by HEC Montreal, Montreal, Canada.

Doctoral Student Yeqi Zhu (Co-author and Mentor faculty Dr. Lu Fan) received the Outstanding Student Research Paper Symposium Award for her paper entitled “Buy now, pay later: A roadblock to financial well-being” and will be recognized in the 2025 AFCPE Conference at Phoenix, AZ later this fall.

Graduate Student Alzahra Al-khafaji (mentor and co-author Dr. Kristy Archuleta) received the Best Poster Award in the 2025 Financial Therapy Association Conference, held here in Athens, GA this summer.

Graduate Student Samuel Molina received the Outstanding Community Outreach Leader Award in the 2025 Financial Therapy Association’s Annual Conference held in Athens, GA this summer.

Dr. Yilang Peng received three best paper awards this summer:

Mukerjee, S., Ouyang, R., Yang, T. and Peng, Y. (2025). The Causal Effects of Deplatforming Trump: An Enhanced Synthetic Control Approach. Computational Methods division. 75th Annual International Communication Association Conference, Denver, CO.

Peng, Y., Qian, S., Lu, Y., and Shen, C. (2025).  What Features Predict Visual Credibility? Leveraging Multimodal Large Language Models to Enhance Credibility Predictions and Uncover Interpretable Features. Computational Methods division. 75th Annual International Communication Association Conference, Denver, CO.

Mukerjee, S., Yang, T., and  Peng, Y. (2025). The Ideological Antecedents of Inter-media Influence in the Production of News on Facebook. Top paper award. Political Communication Division. International Communication Association. Computational Methods division. 75th Annual International Communication Association Conference, Denver, CO.

Dr. Michael Thomas received the Outstanding Instructor Award in the 2025 Financial Therapy Association’s Annual Conference held in Athens, GA this summer.

Dr. Daehwan Ahn on being awarded the 2025 Sweaney Innovation Fund for his research project entitled “AI in Action: Industry-Ready Date Analytics for Consumer and Financial Futures”.

Dr. Dee Warmath has been invited to be part of the UGA School of Medicine Research Center’s Executive Advisory Committee for a 5 year term.

Dr. Warmath has also been selected as a 2025 UGA Faculty Innovation Fellow, serving as a liaison between the college and the UGA Innovation District

Dr. Travis Mountain and Prof. Deborah Lacey were both accepted to the 2025 UGA Teaching Academy Early Career Fellows Program

Dr. Kristy Archuleta was accepted to the 2025 UGA Service Learning Fellows program.

Dr. Lu Fan was accepted to the 2025 FACS Leadership Fellows program.

Successful Grants and Awards

Several FHCE faculty including Drs. Daehwan Ahn, Dee Warmath, Jermaine Durham, Joe Goetz, John Grable, Kristy Archuleta, Kim Skobba, Kimberly Watkins, Lance Palmer, Megan Ford, Pamela Turner, Sharon Kane, Travis Mountain, Wil Golden, and Yilang Peng secured new and on-going funding to support their research and outreach efforts over the course of this summer.  

 Other news…

Enrollments grew for all of the FHCE undergraduate programs and the FHCE graduate program this past Spring 2025!

Doctoral student Mary Akinde was selected as one of the 20 Doctoral Summer Intern (Data Science related) selected by the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education.

Doctoral students Catherine Asiimwe, Kiana Drummond, and Sebastian Sandoval presented their papers and participated in sessions at the 2025 VITA U Conference in Puerto Rico.

Doctoral students Alzahra AlKhafaji, Ben Hampton Kevin Bayani, Ravisha Chutani, Charlotte Ingram, Lindsay Mapes, Kiana Drummond, and Naomi Hill presented at the 2025 Financial Therapy Association Conference in Athens, GA.

Doctoral Student Juha Lee presented at the 2025 Frontiers in Service Conference hosted by HEC Montreal, Montreal, Canada. Juha also presented a paper at another conference in Zagreb Croatia this summer.

Doctoral student Xiaoyuan Sun’s research proposal has been selected for presentation at the 2025 CFP® Connections Conference in Chicago, IL in October, 2025.

Research proposals submitted by doctoral Students Kiana Drummond, Lindsay Mapes, and Yeqi Zhu have been selected for presentation at the 2025 AFCPE Annual Conference in Phoenix Arizona this November.

Dr. Megan Ford served as the Chair for the 2025 Financial Therapy Association Conference held in Athens, GA this summer.

Drs. John Grable, Effie Antonoudi, Dee Warmath, and Swarn Chatterjee will also be participating in research and panel presentations at the 2025 CFP® Connections conference, Chicago, IL in October, 2025.

Dr. Kim Skobba completed another successful 2025 London Study Abroad program for the College this summer.

Dr. Effie Antonoudi also completed a successful 2025 Greece Study Abroad program for the College this summer.

Dr. Antonoudi also received the Provost’s International Fund to present her research at the 2025 FMA European Conference (Limassol, Cyprus), and at the 2025 World Finance Conference (Malta) this summer

Dr. Kimberly Watkins led a very successful 2025 UGA Financial Planning Academy this summer.

Research

If you have any news items or current research you would like included in Just So You Know…. please email Swarn Chatterjee. Just So You Know…. is now available at https://www.fcs.uga.edu/fhce/just-so-you-know.

For more program updates, follow me on Linked In.

Antonoudi, E., Kostandini, G., & Lim, H. (2025). Immigration Law Enforcement and Immigrant Homeownership. Financial Services Review, 33(2), 93–123. https://doi.org/10.61190/fsr.v33i2.4113

This study used the American Community Survey microdata and employed difference-in-differences (DID) models to explore whether local immigration law enforcement, through 287(g) agreements and the Secure Communities program, impacted homeownership among different demographic groups. The findings indicate that 287(g) agreements significantly reduce the likelihood of homeownership, particularly among Hispanics without a college education and U.S. citizenship, with effects most pronounced in states lacking E-Verify mandates. The Secure Communities program exhibits more nuanced effects, initially showing positive impacts for specific Hispanic populations; however, these results are not robust to pre-trend analyses. Additional factors such as length of U.S. residence, English proficiency, age, and household income strongly influence immigrant homeownership outcomes, underscoring the complex interplay between policy enforcement and socio-economic assimilation. The results highlight unintended economic consequences of immigration enforcement policies, suggesting important considerations for housing stability, financial security, and integration policies aimed at immigrant and broader community well-being.

Choung, Y., Pak, T.Y., & Chatterjee, S. (2025). Digital financial literacy and life satisfaction: Evidence from South Korea. Behavioral Sciences, 15(1), 94. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15010094

This study examines the association between digital financial literacy and life satisfaction in a developed country context. Digital financial literacy was measured using a multidimensional scale that encompasses financial knowledge, digital literacy, digital financial service awareness, practical know-how of digital financial services, and self-protection against digital financial fraud. Using data of 1615 Korean adults who currently use digital financial services, this study estimated a series of regressions linking life satisfaction to digital financial literacy and covariates. The results showed a significant association between digital financial literacy and life satisfaction, with self-protection against fraud being the most influential subdimension. Notably, financial knowledge was not associated with life satisfaction when other dimensions of digital financial literacy were independently included in the regression models. These findings highlight the importance of digital skills and knowledge in navigating digital financial services. They also emphasize the need for targeted policies, financial education initiatives, and consumer protection measures to address the lack of digital financial literacy among marginalized populations.

Ford, M. R., Goetz, J. W., Archuleta, K. L., Hargrove, C. M., & Gale, J. (2025). Development of the Couple Financial Conflict Scale: A Pilot Study. Journal of Financial Therapy, 16(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.4148/1944-9771.1398

Conflict over financial matters is a prevalent challenge among couples and, when persistent, can undermine relationship stability. Despite its significance, the availability of validated assessment tools to measure financial conflict within intimate relationships remains limited. Grounded in Couples and Finances Theory, this study presents the development of the Couple Financial Conflict Scale (CFCS), an innovative, eight-item instrument designed to evaluate the presence and frequency of self-reported financial conflict between partners. Preliminary findings suggest that the CFCS demonstrates acceptable reliability and validity. The study discusses implications for both practitioners and researchers, highlighting potential applications in clinical and academic settings.

Park, H., Jung, S. B., Byun, Y. H., Ahn, D., Park, C. W., Byun, S., & Huang, Y. (2025, April). Lessons from Real-World Settings: What Makes It Uniquely Difficult to Design Cognitive Training Programs for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Other Developmental Disabilities. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-21). https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713965

Despite the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other developmental disabilities (DD) worldwide, children with ASD and DD face tremendous difficulties receiving support due to physical, financial, and psychological barriers to onsite health and education clinics. As a result, researchers and practitioners have designed software solutions aimed at providing accessible support to meet users’ needs. However, we have limited knowledge of whether these solutions indeed work in real-world settings. To address this gap, we conducted a case study on a cognitive training program called Dubupang, designed by Dubu Inc. From in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders and field observations of children with ASD and DD, we identify Dubu Inc.’s internal development processes, the critical design issues that emerged through a series of field trials (e.g., instructional design and feedback), and the key implications (e.g., importance of caregivers’ strategic human interventions) for design that better supports both children with ASD and DD and their caregivers.

Peng, Q., Lu, Y., Peng, Y., Qian, S., Liu, X., & Shen, C. (2025, April). Crafting Synthetic Realities: Examining Visual Realism and Misinformation Potential of Photorealistic AI-Generated Images. In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12). https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3719834

Advances in generative models have produced Artificial Intelligence-Generated Images (AIGIs) nearly indistinguishable from real photographs. Leveraging 30,824 AIGIs collected from Instagram and X (Twitter), this study combines quantitative and qualitative content analysis of a sample of 4,335 AIGIs to examine the photorealism of AIGIs through visual features related to perceived realism across content, human, aesthetic, and AI production features. We find photorealistic AIGIs often depict human figures, especially celebrities and politicians, with notable surrealism. Aesthetic professionalism is evident in staging and professional lighting. Only a small number of AIGIs show clear signs of generative AI, and AI production flaws were rare but varied. Our findings offer critical insights for understanding visual misinformation, mitigating potential risks of photorealistic AIGIs, and improving the responsible use of AIGIs.

Kim, S. J., Lu, Y., & Peng, Y. (2025). Unmasking Deception: How computer vision could empower journalists in unveiling visual misinformation. In The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism (pp. 471-482). Taylor & Francis Group. DOI: 10.4324/9781003391340-45

Journalists in the digital media era have faced many challenges - including sorting online misinformation from accurate information in news reporting. In particular, the increasing presence of visual misinformation can be detrimental to journalism as visual information is especially powerful to audiences, and penetration of visual misinformation could potentially lead to significant distortions in audience perception and understanding of the issues journalists report. Various types of computer vision techniques have been developed to mitigate the influence of visual misinformation circulated online. This chapter explores computational models designed to detect visual misinformation and discusses how these computer vision tools can empower journalists in their efforts. It starts by explaining why it is important to understand and detect visual misinformation in the digital age. It then systematically reviews different types of online visual misinformation and their impact on journalism. The chapter further examines various computer vision techniques that automatically identify visual misinformation, highlighting their potential to assist journalists in identifying visual misinformation. Despite their merits, it concludes by identifying the limitations of current computer vision tools and stresses the importance of visual literacy education for journalists and audiences to combat online visual misinformation.