At its recent National Conference, NASFAA presented its 2006 "NASFAA State Awards" in three service categories: Service to the Financial Aid Profession (Texas); Service to Other Constituencies (Arizona); and Service to Students, Parents, and Families (Minnesota).
This article presents a summary and contact information for all of the entries received for the 2006 NASFAA State Awards competition. Prior year winners are also available on-line. NASFAA thanks all states that submitted projects for consideration. Applications for the 2007 competition are available at http://www.nasfaa.org/Apps/Forms/StateAwards/StateAwards.asp.
Service to the Financial Aid Profession
State: California
Title: Boot Camp for Transition Team for CASFAA 2006
Description: Each year, CASFAA experiences a slow-down of its projects because committee chairs and newly elected officers aren't familiar with their responsibilities and the budgeting process. The Boot Camp was designed in response to requests for more thorough training before beginning volunteer work for the Association. While some of the 2006 elected officers--and many of the 2006 committee chairs--served in various capacities doing CASFAA volunteer work before, the consensus of the group was that this was the very best training they had ever received. Many stated that they felt more comfortable with being a volunteer and better informed than they had ever experienced in the past. 75 members received the actual training, but all 1,700 members of CASFAA benefited because projects can be moved forward immediately and in a fiscally responsible manner.
Contact:
Louise Jones
University of California, Riverside
1156 Hinderaker Hall
Riverside, CA 92521
951/827-7247
louise.jones@ucr.edu
State: DE-DC-MD
Title: The History of DE-DC-MD ASFAA: "Looking Back:
36 Years of History"
Description: A group of Tri-State members developed an archive and history report of the Tri-State financial aid association as a reference and model for other financial aid associations. The committee began its work on this project approximately four years ago by sifting through stored archive material dating back to 1968. In the process, they produced a final report and CD, and completely reorganized the association's archives into a usable library of material. Several additional by-products resulting from the committee's efforts included: an action plan for the storage of association archive material; guidelines for the association board and officers to follow to insure that the archives are kept current; and reorganization of the current archives for ease of storage and retrieval. This summary almost sounds too simple to describe the time and effort that went into this project but the end result is a collection of details and documents that trace the associations' history. Tri-State believes that as the association continues to grow and evolve, it will be extremely important to continue to support this project.
Contact:
Jacqueline Daughtry-Miller
Independence Fed Savings Bank
7901 Eastern Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20910
301/562-8515
jdaughtry2@aol.com
State: Texas
Title: TRAINetwork -TASFAA Resources Activities Instructional Network
Winner: Service to the Financial Aid Profession
Description: TASFAA's objective was to create a mechanism to identify and acknowledge the various outreach and early awareness efforts accomplished by the Association's members and associate members. Grade school events, high school events, financial aid awareness events, parent nights, and other types of activities are listed and mapped. The system allows all member institutions to view activities by region, count, city and zip code. It provides a brief description of the event's purpose, audience, turnout and comments to measure the success of event. The site features a search function that allows users to search by event, audience, location, and host. This data is shared throughout the membership, to better inform members of the activities that take place in specific areas of Texas and the territories that seem under served. In addition, this data is used to inform and educate the community and government entities of the Association's commitment to outreach and public awareness.
Contact:
Jim Anderson
Texas Tech University
Box 45011
Lubbock, TX 79423
806/742-0454 ext. 230
James.anderson@ttu.edu
Service to Students/Parents/Families
State: Minnesota
Title: Focus on the Future
Winner: Service to Students/Parents/Families
Description: To better prepare Minnesota 4th-6th grade students to plan for college, MAFAA with permission from NeASFAA, revised the 1992 NASFAA award-winning "Look to the Future" early awareness curriculum. "Focus on the Future", the updated curriculum, was revised to provide translations of parent newsletters and flyers into Hmong, Somali, and Spanish, meet new Minnesota high school graduation standards and be accessible via the web. MAFAA's goal was to promote "Focus on the Future" to all Minnesota 4th-6th grade educators via the MAFAA Web site with hyperlinks posted on the Education MN and the MN Office of Higher Education, Get Ready for College Web site. The 2004-2005 goal was to increase participation to 20 classrooms; instead, the curriculum was fully implemented in 30 classrooms. "Focus on the Future" reached 1,398 students, a 50% increase from the previous year.
Contact:
Susan Prater
Saint Paul College
235 Marshall Avenue
Saint Paul, MN 55102
651/846-1471
susan.prater@saintpaul.edu
State: New York
Title: Higher Education Day at the New York State Fair
Description: To raise awareness for college planning, two of NYSFAAA's committees combined their efforts to play and promote "Higher Education Day" at the New York State Fair. Representatives from state and private colleges and universities and higher education organizations manned 18 tables with in the pavilion giving families a chance to talk with representatives in a casual atmosphere. NYSFAAA offered a drawing for 2- $500 scholarships and distributed 650 wristbands for youngsters and 500 brochures for families. The wristband was embossed with "I'm Going to College" along with the NYSFAAA Web site, NYSFAAA.org address, which highlights a 'Planning Ahead' page. The brochure entitled, "It's Sooner Than You Think," emphasized the importance of planning ahead and presents savings options. Through their visible theme, NYSFAAA is confident that the message about planning for college reached thousands of attendees.
Contact:
Sharon Karwowski
Tompkins Cortland Community College
170 North Street
Dryden, NY 13053
607/844-6581, ext 4454
karwows@TC3.edu
Service to Other Constituencies
State: Arizona
Title: The Automation of the Tribal Funding Application Process
Winner: Service to Other Constituencies
Description: The purpose of the project was to create a common electronic FNA application (Tribal funding application) that all Arizona tribes, schools and students can utilize. The tribal funding application process has traditionally been a very labor intensive and paper intensive process for students, schools, and tribes in Arizona. In November of 2002, AASFAA President, Pat Peppin created an Ad Hoc committee to automate the process. The first step was to create a common application among the 21 tribes recognized in Arizona followed by contracting with an Internet web page host to create a secure environment for submitting, retrieving and forwarding the application information to the appropriate entities. The result is an online application process with real time access and email updates to students, school administrators and tribal representatives regarding the application process.
Contact:
Rebecca Vinzant
Wachovia Education Finance
3005 Sandhill Lane
Champaign, IL 61822
217-369-5723
rebecca.vinzant@wachovia.com
Service to Advance the Goals of Access & Diversity
State: Minnesota
Title: Development and Implementation of State Association Diversity Task Force/Committee
Description: In an effort to bring a greater awareness of diversity to MAFAA, MAFAA's executive council proposed and approved the creation of a task force in November 2004. The Diversity Task Force (DTF) created a survey for the MAFAA membership, sponsored a one-day Poverty Workshop, sponsored several state conference interest sessions, wrote articles for the monthly electronic membership newsletter MAFAA Matters, and held a pre-conference workshop for the MAFAA 2005 annual fall conference. MAFAA recommends this approach as one that is educational, interactive, and informative but non-threatening.
Contact:
Debbie Velasco
College of St. Catherine
601 25th Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55454
651/690-7804
davelasco@stkate.edu
Posted August 23, 2006 on www.NASFAA.org, the Web Site of the
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA).
Copyright 2006. Redistribution to non-NASFAA institutions is prohibited
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