Casey Mock, an accountant for the Alcorn State University Foundation, Inc., has completed the College Business Management Institute, earning a certificate that caps three summers of coursework at the University of Kentucky.
“On behalf of the ASU Foundation, I am immensely proud to celebrate Mr. Casey Mock on completing the College Business Management Institute program, Treasury Track, at the University of Kentucky,” said Dr. Marcus Ward, senior vice president for institutional advancement and executive director of the ASU Foundation. “This is a tremendous accomplishment and reflects Mr. Mock’s dedication to professional excellence and commitment to advancing and strengthening the mission of the ASU Foundation and Alcorn State University. We are grateful to have him on our team and excited to see the impact this newly gained expertise will have on our campus and in his continued career growth.”
CBMI is not a quick credential. The program runs three years. Each summer, participants spend a full week in Lexington, Ky., working long days built around the business of running a university.
Ward heard about CBMI from a colleague at another school and encouraged Mock to look into it.
“Once I visited the CBMI website and started reading about the history of the program and all it had to offer, I knew that attending CBMI would be a great opportunity for me to develop personally and professionally,” Mock said.
The institute offers more than 80 courses, and in the second and third years participants build their own schedules. Mock chose the Treasury Track and stayed close to the daily work of the Foundation — budgeting for small schools, auditing, treasury management, gift stewardship and leadership development.
Casey Mock, an accountant for the Alcorn State University Foundation, celebrates his certificate at the College Business Management Institute graduation banquet at the University of Kentucky.
Some of it changed how Mock approaches the job.
“The audit courses helped me to see ways to maintain and strengthen our risk management policies and procedures,” Mock said. “The treasury management and gift stewardship courses helped me to gain knowledge on PCI compliance and safeguarding the funds of the Foundation and our donors.”
Not every course sat squarely in accounting. That is by design. CBMI pushes participants to look past their own field, and for Mock, a course on storytelling through data stood out.
“It helped me to see the different ways people understand data and how important it is to make sure your presentation tells the story represented by the data instead of just presenting the data itself,” Mock said.
The lessons that stuck were not all technical. Mock said the program made one thing plain: colleges share the same core challenges whether they enroll 30,000 students or 1,000.
“I spoke with colleagues from different universities, and they gave me insight into some of their successes dealing with some of the challenges we face at Alcorn, while I did the same for them,” Mock said. “I also learned about some industry best practices in financial management that have already helped me to strengthen the way I serve in my current role.”
The certificate, Mock said, is the smaller part of the story.
“It is just a tangible representation of the commitment I made to my personal and professional development over the three weeks across three summers spent at the University of Kentucky,” Mock said. “I stepped outside of my comfort zone and gained knowledge and connections that I would not have experienced without CBMI.”
The advice for anyone weighing the same road is short. Go.
“The experience gained at CBMI and similar programs can go with you through the rest of your career and beyond,” Mock said.
