For release: March 16, 2001
Contact: Lisa Locke, (502) 568-9292; Charles B. Henderson, (314) 444-8311

Barren County High Wins Louisville Area "Fed Challenge"

LOUISVILLE -- A team of five students from Barren County High School in Glasgow, Ky., won first place in the Louisville area "2001 Fed Challenge," an economics competition sponsored by the Louisville Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. A team from Hart County High School in Munfordville, Ky., won second place.

The five students from Barren County High are Morgan Holmes, Cody Lorton, Tiffany Miller, Daphne Pace and Aimee Young. Their teacher is Cindy Jackson. Vicki Pennycuff, vice president of AREA Bank in Glasgow, served as coach.

The Barren County team will participate in the Eighth Federal Reserve District competition on April 4 in Little Rock, Ark., against teams from St. Louis and the St. Louis Fed's branch cities of Little Rock, Louisville and Memphis. The winning team from that competition will then represent the District at the Federal Reserve's national finals in Washington, D.C., on April 28-30.

For the Fed Challenge, student teams each make a 15-minute presentation, based on their research, before a panel of judges at a mock meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve's policymaking body. Team members also have to answer judges' questions about their research and the Federal Reserve. Although five students make up each team, the Fed Challenge in many cases involves other students, who serve as researchers, advisors, technical and graphic support, and practice-session judges.

The St. Louis Fed encourages all the student teams to consult a variety of sources to prepare their presentations, including the business sections of local and national newspapers, financial journals and the Internet, particularly the Reserve Bank's Web site: http://www.stls.frb.org/education/fedchal/.

The judges for the Louisville area competition were Jack Morgan, professor of the School of Secondary Education at the University of Louisville; Orson Oliver, president of Mid-America Bank of Louisville; and John Vahaly, associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Louisville.

With branches in Little Rock, Louisville and Memphis, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis serves the Eighth Federal Reserve District, which includes all of Arkansas, eastern Missouri, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, western Kentucky, western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. In addition to serving as a bank for depository institutions and the U.S. government, each Reserve Bank monitors economic conditions in its District, participates in formulating monetary policy, and supervises state-chartered member banks and bank holding companies to foster safety and soundness of its District's banking and financial institutions and protect the credit rights of consumers.

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