making the most of your financial aid system anna kelly director of financial aid new england...
TRANSCRIPT
Making The Most of Your Financial Aid System
Anna KellyDirector of Financial Aid
New England Institute of Technology
Russ RomandiniSenior Systems Analyst
Higher Education Assistance Group, Inc.
What is needed to succeed?
Support from teammates
Support from boss or bosses
Knowledgeable resources
Willingness to try (and maybe fail) a few times before you get
it right
Challenges• Describing the benefits of new
processes to colleagues outside of the financial aid office
• Convincing administration to spend money
• Managing time to conduct work while maintaining daily office duties
• Learning the technical stuff
New Job, New Software, New Experiences
• Accepted position as financial aid director at a private, non-profit college as of September, 2010
• Now had to use a system I had not used before• Limited experience with 2 plus 2 system with 4 ten-week quarters• Limited IT support• New responsibility of upgrading software updates
Where Do I Begin?
• Needed to set up annual year roll process, and decided to bring in outside help to make sure I learned best practices for my software
• Involved staff in new set up procedures• Involved staff in what automation options were available• Involved staff in what functions we need/wish list
Putting The Plan Into Action
Establish Timeline
Increased usage of Self-service
function
Automated missing
information letters
Automated satisfactory academic
progress process
Make A Plan and Stick To It
• Dec 2010-New year 11-12 roll process• Feb 2011-Auto-packaging with tracking• March 2011-Auto-packaging and student self service/web accept of aid/loan
periods• May 2011-Missing information letter• Aug 2011-SAP process
Ongoing Efforts• Staff training is continuous -
communication and training for staff and ½ day training sessions
• Allow plenty of time for questions/discussion
• Increase comfort level with changes in their tasks/stress benefits to students
What Are Your System Hot Spots?• When did you last make a list of items that
you would like to automate and/or improve processes?
• Where can you improve automation in your system or remove redundancy?
• Benefits of automation• Improves processing accuracy & awarding
equity• Increases staff & student satisfaction
Where Can I Make System Improvements?• Managing System Release Updates• ISIR Loads• Student Applications• Letter Generation• Conflicts• COD Processing & Reconciliation• Budgeting & Packaging• Automated Packaging• R2T4
Software Release Updates• Who manages system release updates
on your campus? • How would you rate your level of
system support on your campus?• How quickly are system upgrades
loaded?• Are you a beta-tester or do you wait to
hear about any potential known release issues?
Software Release Updates (cont.)• Is automation embraced on your campus
or are many things still done manually?• For those using a single-source system, is
information fed routinely to and from other key offices? (Admissions, Student Accounts, Registrar etc.)
• How many of you believe that you’re getting the most out of your current software package?
• ISIR Data Load & folder preparation• Review ISIR Load Process• How often are files loaded? • How much time does the file load
process take?• Is there a process in place to
account for the potential of dropped records?
• Are there ways to improve accuracy and/or efficiency?
ISIR Loads
• Have you clearly defined your student groups?• Entering students• Returning students
• Not Selected for Verification• Selected for Verification
• V1, V2, V3, V4, V5• Independent• Dependent
• Graduate Students• Ensures that data can be segmented for
reporting and executing communication plans
Grouping of Student Application
Data
•Are communications to students automated to run on their or through executable job processes?•Missing documentation letters run every other week (or more often depending on need) •Award letters run weekly •Right to cancel notifications run day of disbursement
Letter Generati
on & Executing Commun
ication Plans
•Comment codes•Parent/Student tax data flagged as “02” – cleared through IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT)•Parent/Student tax data flagged as “05” – did not use IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) but eligible to do so
How Do You Identify
Conflicting Information
? How do you clear it?
Reject/C-Flags
•Clearing Loan exceptions•Sending Loan Disbursement Notifications•Is your DL Reconciliation process automated through DL Tools or other process?•What have you done recently to further automate and/or streamline your loan process?
COD Processing & Reconciliation
•How have you segmented your budget groups? •Do you assign budget groups in batch or do you manually assign a group upon initial file review?
Budgeting and Packag
ing Groups
•Are you using the automated packaging functionality in your software system?•Saves time and improves awarding accuracy & equity•If yes, to what extent are you using it?•Federal funds only•Institutional funds•Leveraging•If not, why not?•Lack of internal resources?•Shortage of expertise on campus with implementing formulas?•Other?
Automated
Packaging
•Does your software system have built in R2T4 processing? If so, is it being used?•How do you capture list of withdrawn students? Do you have control to run withdrawal reports or do you depend on receiving data from other departments?
Return of Title IV fund Proces
sing
Additional Recommendations
• Paperless options• Satisfactory Academic Progress• Federal Work-Study processing• Do you have a process that you’ve recently automated that has improved
efficiency and/or equity?
Thank you for attending our session!
Anna KellyNew England Institute of Technology
Russ RomandiniHigher Education Assistance Group
www.heag.us - follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Higher Education Assistance Group, Inc.