ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 18, 2011 – The InVEST program awarded Bob Captain, an insurance executive with Barney & Barney LLC in San Diego and Grossmont College faculty member, with the InVEST Teacher of the Year Award. The program is a key driver to attract new talent to the insurance industry.
“Great teachers who trail blaze InVEST programs, like Bob Captain, are the backbone of this wonderful program which is so critical for the success of the industry,” says Heather Minkler, chair of the National InVEST board of directors and CEO of Clark-Mortenson Agency, an independent insurance agency in Keene, N.H. “Bob’s dedication to InVEST for the past twenty years has not gone unnoticed and we are honored to present him with this year’s Teacher of the Year Award.”
In 1990, Captain and a few other insurance professionals approached Grossmont College, a community college in El Cajon, Calif., with the idea to implement an arm of their already established Office Professional Training (OPT) program to train insurance support personnel. Captain worked directly with campus representatives to design an insurance curriculum and was later the first instructor of the InVEST option of the OPT program at Grossmont College in 1992.
Captain serves as a liaison between the insurance industry and Grossmont College, developing job leads, cultivating internship contacts and recruiting mentors for the students. He brings in guest speakers from a variety of insurance occupations and promotes the program among his colleagues in the insurance industry. Grossmont’s insurance program is one of its most well-known and well-respected curriculums.
“The future of our industry depends on attracting new talent and InVEST is a major part of this development,” says Robert Rusbuldt, Big “I” president & CEO. “We need more industry professionals like Bob Captain to continue stepping up to train, inspire and teach the next generation of industry leaders.”
As a 501(c)(3) educational trust, InVEST benefits from the support of numerous insurance organizations, hundreds of agencies, brokers and volunteers. The program provides the insurance industry with motivated, talented and intelligent professionals through a support structure of state associations, board members, national staff, teachers and the many industry professionals who work in the field as classroom liaisons.
Founded in 1970 and based in Alexandria, Va., InVEST promotes insurance education in order to attract individuals to pursue a career in the insurance industry. Each year, the program prepares thousands of students for insurance-related careers with a hands-on curriculum taught in high schools, adult education centers and community colleges. The high school curriculum is a business-education program that utilizes a hands-on approach which simulates an insurance agency and company operations to prepare students for various business careers and create more knowledgeable insurance consumers. At the college level, InVEST is an information-intensive curriculum of risk management and financial services. These courses provide students with a working knowledge of the basics needed to pursue careers in the insurance industry. For more information, go to www.investprogram.org.
Founded in 1896, the Big “I” is the nation’s oldest and largest national association of independent insurance agents and brokers, representing a network of more than 300,000 agents, brokers and their employees nationally. Its members are businesses that offer customers a choice of policies from a variety of insurance companies. Independent agents and brokers offer all lines of insurance—property, casualty, life, health, employee benefit plans and retirement products. Web address: www.independentagent.com.
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