UMD Engaged: Connor Pederson

This article was originally published in the April 2026 print edition of The Bark, distributed at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus.

Connor Pederson receives the Community-Engaged Scholar Award from the Office of Public Engagement. Photo courtesy of Connor Pederson

UMD senior Connor Pederson has spent over three years working on a project to teach financial literacy to students at Denfeld High School. Every Wednesday afternoon, he travels to West Duluth to build the knowledge of students who wonder about budgeting, taxes and rising gas prices. 

“The goal was to create a program where students could be heard wherever they were, so that they didn't have to have a certain baseline of knowledge,” Pederson said. 

Pederson began as a math tutor, working under DASH (Denfeld After School Happenings) which provides services such as tutoring, culturally and socially enriching activities, and nutrition services. While doing this work, he was simultaneously teaching a class on investing and realized a disconnect that he now works to bridge. 

“The people that I was teaching about investing and personal finance had the means to pay to take a class on personal finance, where the students at Denfeld that I was working with were the ones that were really asking more questions, but they were not the ones getting them answered. And so it seemed like there's a misallocation of resources here,” Pederson said. 

His goal is to make personal finance accessible to everyone and stresses that it looks different for each individual. This ongoing project has been, in part, a result of Pederson’s connections with the students. 

“There's something to having relationships with students and being a constant presence of someone who's there, rather than just saying, ‘learn!’” Pederson said. “Learning is a constructive and collaborative process.”