ValleyStar Credit Union ($679.5M, Martinsville, VA) was sold from the start on a mutually beneficial partnership with the Center for Business Analytics at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business.
With Virginia Tech’s campus less than two hours away from the credit union’s headquarters, working with graduate students pursuing their Master of Science in Business Administration — Business Analytics was an easy sell.
CU QUICK FACTS
ValleyStar Credit Union
DATA AS OF 03.31.23
HQ: Martinsville, VA
ASSETS: $679.5M
MEMBERS: 45,277
BRANCHES: 6
EMPLOYEES: 119
NET WORTH RATIO: 9.8%
ROA: 0.50%
“I was fortunate to meet the leadership team of ValleyStar last year,” says Jay Winkeler, executive director at the Center for Business Analytics at Virginia Tech. “Our master’s program in business analytics and the capstone project focuses on applying analytical techniques to understand the challenges and problems credit unions and other organizations may be facing.”
Soon after that introduction, representatives from Virginia Tech and ValleyStar began exchanging thoughts on a definition statement. Once the group developed a tight enough scope to serve the credit union’s needs and provide practical experience for the master’s students, Winkeler matched ValleyStar with the right team.
The credit union’s four-person team includes a finance major graduate, a person with business information technology expertise, an individual with an engineering background, and a marketing/communications professional.
“We bring together a team that includes skills in the organization’s core business area but also new viewpoints,” Winkeler says. “Then, we turn the work over to the team, similar to a consulting project.”

ValleyStar’s “consulting” team of master’s students officially started their capstone project at the end of September 2022 and will wrap it up in June 2023.
“We’re looking for efficiency within our enterprise risk management process,” says Robert Sparrow, senior vice president and chief risk officer at ValleyStar. “For this project, we narrowed that focus to a few key risk areas such as interest rate risk and lending risk.”
Although the capstone project hasn’t concluded yet, ValleyStar has already benefited from the perspectives these four master’s students are bringing to the table. The team started by learning more about the credit union industry and how ValleyStar performs in relation to its peers. That work included analyzing financial data using Callahan’s Peer to Peer software.
Peer helped us onboard the team from Virginia Tech and allowed them to get up to speed quickly on what credit unions do and how they create value for members.
“Peer helped us onboard the team from Virginia Tech and allowed them to get up to speed quickly on what credit unions do and how they create value for members,” Sparrow says. “And while we don’t have the final presentation yet, they’ve already uncovered new opportunities to enhance efficiency in our ERM process.”
That jump-start into what cooperatives are all about was essential. The students commit a significant amount of time to their capstone project, and like in the consulting world, they needed to deeply understand their client and the market.

“Although it can vary, we estimate students spend five to 10 hours per week on meetings, research, and getting up to speed in the fall semester,” Winkeler says. “In the spring that ramps up to 10 to 15 hours per week. And in the last two weeks of the year, preparing for the final presentation becomes an all-day, everyday commitment.”
ValleyStar has already committed to continuing its partnership with Virginia Tech next year. That partnership includes paying a fee to the Center for Business Analytics to cover the delivery of the work product back to the credit union. Next year, the credit union likely will focus on a different area outside of ERM; conversations regarding the exact scope will occur this summer.
According to Sparrow, the ability of ValleyStar to tap into these resources is invaluable. The master’s students represent a highly in-demand talent pool with skillsets that many institutions can’t typically access.
“They’ve brought new tools and different perspectives to our team,” Sparrow says. “Having access to those types of insights from an institution like Virginia Tech is a wonderful experience.”
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