Welcome &
Introductions
Region 1 Minutes
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Submitted by Sarah Izzo,
Secretary
Attendance:
AFC Rachel Barker & Kristen
Carey
AMS Maureen Fagan
Chase Education Finance Michael Woody
Citibank Laura Worley
Citizens Bank Ambrose Price
D’Youville College Stephanie Atti
ECC Sarah Izzo
First
HSBC Sherrie Sheppard
Nellie Mae Katrina Delgrosso & Jennifer
Pollard
Nelnet Anne Del Plato
Next Student Theresa Gieseke
NSLP Anne Barton
NYSHESC Jack Rafferty
Sallie Mae Ithrene Cameron
Student Capital Corporation Dan Dunn
Student Loan Xpress Brian Levy
UB Kevin
Ryan & Amanda Wirth
USAFunds Debra Eddy
Wachovia Karen Blankenburg
Welcome & Housekeeping (Kevin Ryan)
Villa Maria College President Sister Marcella
Marie Garus welcomed NYSFAAA
Region I to the college and invited all in attendance to browse the
Introductions
Treasurer’s Report (Rachel Barker for Brent
McEnroe)
Correction:
Ending Balance as of
Thursday December 15, 2005: $4,094.74
SUNY Fredonia check of
$212.80 was not processed until 01/06/06. Also, First Niagara processed check
#473 as $212.00 instead of $212.50. These corrections are updated below.
Balance $4,094.74
Minus $2.00 check image
fee 12/08/05
Equals: $4,092.74
12/15/05
Balance $4,092.74
Plus deposit for
Equals: $5,567.74
12/21/05
Minus: $2,353.32 check
#476 Harry’s Harbour Place Holiday Meeting Payment on
Equals: $3,214.42
12/28/05
Plus deposit for
Equals: $3,704.42
12/29/05
Minus check #473
correction: $.50
Equals: $3,703.92
1/06/06
Minus check #475: $212.80
Region 1 Meeting November 2005 SUNY Fredonia
Equals: $3, 491.12
1/12/06
Plus deposit for
Equals: $3,691.12
Minus $2.00 check image
fee 1/12/06
Equals: $3,689.12
1/30/06
Minus Check #477 deposit
for Jim Briggs Tax Workshop Classic V’s: $100.00
Equals: $3,589.12
1/31/06
Plus deposit for
Equals: $3,899.12
2/7/06
Minus Check #478 Deposit
for Support Staff Workshop Michael’s: $200.00
Equals: $3,699.12
2/8/06
Minus $2.00 Check Image
Fee
Equals: $3,697.12
2/21/06
Plus deposit for
Equals: $3,782.12
3/1/06
Plus deposit for Revenue
Share: $920.00
Equals: $4,702.12
As of March 1, 2006 our
checking account balance is: $4,702.12.
Executive Council Update (Janet McGrath)
NYSFAAA Executive Council Minutes
January 29-30, 2006
Janet McGrath voted in
as Member from Region 1 – replacing Rachel Barker, who has taken a position
with AFC.
Treasurer’s Report
Dues are way up, but
CAAN support is down.
Credit cards will be
used at Novice registration. Anytime a
region is planning an event involving a fee, Paula at ATAC needs to be informed
and Events Management function of website must be used.
VP Training Report
Jim Briggs Tax Seminar
– Regions 1,2,3 Thank you, Kevin, for
coordinating this. Also held in
Intermediate Training
for Regions 1,2,3 will be held March 17, 2006 at SUNY Brockport.
Membership Report
Largest membership
count – 1304.
President’s Report
College Goal Sunday –
Exploratory Grant has been received.
Looking for approximately 12-14 volunteers. Wayne Harewood will be state coordinator and
Ken Storms is HESC representative.
Novice Training will
be held at Cobleskill June 3-9, 2007.
Contract has been signed. Cap has been put on 120. There will be twelve small group leaders. Solicitation for volunteers is done
annually. Credit cards can be used for
this event. April 1, 2006 is the date
for registration.
Cindy Kohlman –
Resigned as Awards Chair - Kathy Flaherty will resume Cindy’s position.
New Development Chairperson
is Katrina DelGrosso from Nellie Mae.
Earl Trethway resigned
as Communications Chairman
Early Awareness
Stephanie Atti,
D’Youville – Representing Region 1 - Thank You.
Bracelets available –
if region wants to use them for anything.
Conference Update was
given. Conference will be held in
2007 Conference will
be held in
School Counselor
Workshop Update
Guidance Counselor
Workshop for 2006. High School guidance
counselors have a conference in early November so you might want to plan
according to that and our conference.
President-Elect
Report
Volunteers are needed
for statewide offices. Contact Dave Canaski if interested.
A new membership
policy was voted on – “NYSFAAA will ensure that the membership is limited to
those individuals who are actively engaged in (or retired from) student
financial aid administration, and those others whose career interests are
consistent with the organization’s principles, values and goals.”
HESC Update
PJ will NOT be allowed
for 0607 TAP determinations. HESC Pin will be used for EMPN process
Conference 2006
Update
Dates 11/6-11/9/06 Program Highlights: Dr. Ibraham Gambari, UN Under Secretary and
former SUNY
2007 NYSFAAA
Conference will be in
Government
Relations Update
Legislative Training took
place on Feb 1, 2006, and members
attended the Legislative Forum in
Next Council Meeting
is April 20-21, 2006 in
Anne Barton mentioned that the NYSFAAA site is currently set up to receive credit card payments from only Visa & MasterCard. Many regions have expressed concerns about this as schools have often provided American Express as their business credit card. The issue for the organization is that AMEX charges higher fees.
Committee Updates
Training Committee – (Leah Nicholson)
Training committee has a
new co-chair – Scott Lewis from the College Board has volunteered. Debt Management will be the topic for the
April meeting, and May at
Conference Survey was
completed using Survey Monkey. Anne Del
Plato was very happy with the responses regarding sessions and transportation.
Jim Briggs workshop. Weather and transportation were on our
side. Only 40 attendees, the workshop is
quite costly. A question is outstanding
regarding whether we should hold this training on an annual, every-other-year,
or third year basis in the future.
Moving the workshop to region 2 might make it more central. There is a lot of printed material from
workshop that has been made available to the region. Kevin is working on having the information
linked to the website.
The next meeting is being
held at the ECC South Campus in the cafeteria, the May meeting will be at
Buffalo State College on May 18th.
We will identify the training topic to ensure that computer lab would be
available for hands on training if needed.
Kevin requested feedback
about the need for an Intermediate Workshop to be held in Region I. Please contact Kevin if you would like to see
this in future training planning.
USA Funds is offering two
training opportunities. The closest
Spring 2006 USA Funds Financial Aid Workshop will be held in East Syracuse on
4/13/06 and a Retention Workshop is scheduled for
Support Staff Workshop (Sarah Izzo)
The 2006 Support Staff
workshop was held on Friday, March 10th at Michael’s Banquet
Facility in
Summer Outing (Laura Worley)
Laura sent an e-mail to
the region to get input for the year’s summer outing. Buffalo Bisons was a successful event last
year with good attendance across the region.
We’ve done the Winery Tour & Bisons recently. Ideas suggested included Bisons again, Miss
Additionally, Stephanie
Kindzia will confirm a day for the annual Jet Boat Outing and send something out
to the membership.
CAAN (Stephanie
Atti)
21 High schools were
recently visited for presentations. Not
all responses to the request for information about CAAN presentations have been
received at this time. We can send an
update to John Smith regarding any additional presentations. School counselors are taking over and
presenting more of these parent and student workshops as a result of the
information that is disseminated at the annual School Counselor Workshops!
Early Awareness Committee – Bookmarks (Stephanie
Atti/Kevin Ryan)
Bookmarks are still
available for early awareness activities and library distribution.
Admissions Advisor Workshop (Kevin Ryan)
Kevin is working with
Richard Alvarez from NYACAC to develop this workshop for College Admissions
counselors. We are striving to present
the workshop in July. Anne Del Plato has
agreed to co-chair the workshop committee with Kevin. We will start out in Region I and see how it
goes. The goal is to spread this
workshop offering throughout the state. This
would give the Admissions Counselors the ability to speak more effectively to
students and families about financial aid.
Kathy M. inquired how the month of July was selected – Richard Alvarez
indicated that admissions downtime at the 4-year schools is generally in
July. Kathy suggested that June might be
more appropriate as July-August is peak admissions time for Community Colleges
and many proprietary schools. NYACAC
does have a “boot camp” that is comparable to our Novice Training for new
admissions officers in June. It was
suggested that we might be able to do a test run of some of the workshop
training at the “boot camp”. The NYACAC
conference may be held at UB this year.
Region 1 estimates about 70 admissions counselors would attend the
workshop. We will target MYACAC members, but workshop will be open to all as a
way to encourage counselors to join the professional organization.
HESC Update (Jack Rafferty)
1% Default fee for 06-07
HESC recently announced that New York State
would once again pay the 1 percent federal default fee (formerly known as
insurance fee) on student loans for the 2006-07 academic year, saving college
students and their families more than $25 million this year. This is the eighth year in a row that HESC waived the fee for NYS
students and families.
New federal law requires loan guarantee
agencies such as HESC to deposit the fee into a federal fund to cover the
agency’s expenses that are associated with defaulted loans
2004-05 TAP Closeout Update
The 2004-05 academic year closeout will be extended until June 15,
2006. Any certifications after May 15,
2006 must be communicated to TAP Certification by fax at (518) 486-7679, or by
telephone at (518) 473-3762. The Web
pages will not allow submission of certification data and electronic files will
not be processed after May 15, 2006.
If you have any questions concerning the certification
process, contact John DeFazio at
Federal Student Aid issued an advisory to alert you to an issue that
affected FAFSA on the Web users during the evening of February 28, 2006. Users experienced a significant degradation
of service between 8:40 p.m. and 11:40 p.m. Eastern Time, which caused many
FAFSA on the Web sessions to time-out during the application process.
HESC would like to
advise you that this problem did not affect Tap on the Web. If a student was timed out from the FAFSA,
they would not have had the opportunity to link to the TOTW. If a student had already linked to the TOTW,
the FAFSA problem would have no affect on the student’s TAP record.
The March 31st deadline is rapidly approaching
to complete the College Data Survey. To
date, many schools have not yet submitted their 2006-07 College Data Survey on
the Web. If your institution has already
submitted this information to HESC, no action is needed. If you have not yet submitted the data, you
should do so immediately. The survey can
be updated only by TAP certifying officers, and can be found in Transaction
Processing under the College tab within Grants and Scholarships.
"HESC has revised the March schedule - an additional
2006-07 Preliminary Student Status Listing has been scheduled for March 22nd,
and the Accounting Reports originally scheduled for March 25th have been moved
up a week to March 17th."
The following schedule includes the anticipated date of
Rosters, Remittance Advices (RA), Accounting Documents and Student Status
Listings for March 2006. If HESC is
unable to meet the scheduled date of any of the listed reports, we will send an
e-mail update.
The March 2006 schedule is as follows:
March 1 March
3
2004-05 Roster 2005-06
Remittance Advice (RA)
2005-06
Student Status Listing
March 8 March
10
2006-07 Preliminary Student Status Listing 2005-06 RA/Accounting
Documents
2005-06
Student Status Listing
March 13 March
14
2005-06 Roster 2004-05
RA/Accounting Documents
2004-05
Student Status Listing
March 17 March
22
2005-06 Remittance Advice/Accounting Documents 2006-07
Preliminary Student Status Listing
2005-06 Student Status Listing
March 24 March
31
2005-06 Remittance Advice 2005-06
RA/Accounting Documents
2005-06 Student Status Listing 2005-06 Student Status
Listing
Files will be available for retrieval the following
morning. Payments will be mailed or
electronically transferred within three to five weeks of the date of the
associated Roster or Accounting Documents.
As a reminder, the HESC PIN authentication
process currently used for the TAP on the Web (TOTW) application, as well as
the TAP on-line change form will be used for the electronic Master Promissory
Note (e-MPN) for both Stafford and Plus loans.
This change will be effective May 15, 2006.
The addition of the loan process will provide
a single authentication method for student access to their data on HESC's Web
site. Nearly 300,000 students created a HESC PIN in 2005.
The HESC e-MPN Web screens will be changed to use the HESC PIN. During the e-MPN process, if the student or
parent borrower does not have a HESC PIN, they will have the ability to
instantly create a user ID and PIN and continue with the e-MPN process.
Schools should review their literature for
the e-MPN process. References to the
FAFSA PIN should be deleted, or changed to reference the HESC PIN.
Schools
are encouraged to contact HESC’s Solutions Unit for assistance with any school
loan wrap materials. The Solutions team
can be reached at 518 473-0480 or Solutions@hesc.org
HESC Improves Security to Protect E-mail Containing Personal Data
HESC is changing the way we communicate with you via
e-mail. Starting Monday, March 6, HESC will use a new product to encrypt e-mail
which contains sensitive information or personal data. This product will protect against
unauthorized parties viewing personal data and ensures compliance with state
and federal laws.
How This Will Affect You
Now, when HESC needs to send you an e-mail which includes
personal data, or is responding to an e-mail that has personal data, the
message will be posted at our secure mail site rather than going directly to
your regular e-mail box.
You will receive notification, via your regular
e-mail, that you have a new message at our secure mail site. This e-mail will
contain a link you can use to retrieve your secure message. E-mail that does
not contain protected personal information will continue to be sent directly to
your regular e-mail address.
HESC tutorials on the Web
Three tutorials for financial aid professionals will
familiarize you with HESC's newest online processing products - e-MPN, Default
Manager and HESC EFT Express - all designed to simplify and streamline the
financial aid process for you, your students, and their parents.
Learn more about each of these innovative processing
products at www.hesc.org in the College Administrators & Lenders section,
HESC Products and Services, or click Financial
Aid Administrator Tutorials. The
tutorials can be viewed using Windows
Media Player.
HESC will now notify
“Congratulations! Your Federal Family Education (FFEL)
For schools that do not use HESC’s Credit
Check, Parent borrowers will also be notified that the guarantee is subject to
credit approval.
HESC Lender Advisory Committee
HESC's inaugural Lender Advisory Committee meeting
was held on February 27th. The meeting was held via "Sametime" web
access, and conference call for those who were unable to participate via
"Sametime". The initiative is part of HESC's ongoing efforts to
enhance lender relationships, and to address ongoing and new HESC initiatives.
HESC will continue to solicit suggestions from the committee regarding
topics/agenda items for future meetings, which will be held quarterly.
Any lender representatives that would like to be added to
the Lender Advisory Committee, should contact Michael Williams @mwilliams@hesc.org,
or (518) 473-9680.
Stephanie Kindzia thanked
Jack for the opportunity to take advantage of the generous HESC Training
Grants. They have been a wonderful tool
to encourage the professional development and conference attendance within our
region.
School,
Lender, & Guarantor News
Yvonne Nagel has been
(re)hired by Buffalo State College and they are excited to welcome her back.
Ambrose Price is
on the steering committee for College Goal Sunday representing western and
upstate
Anne Barton
commented that part of the reason that NY has been slow to embrace this event
is that it is usually scheduled the same weekend as the SUNY Financial Aid day.
Other Discussion Items
Grad/Professional
PLUS loan: Very difficult to advise
students what it is that they should do?
Academic
Competitiveness (or Smart) Grants: This
grant will be tied to Pell. What is the
latest?
What about
proposed changes to the TAP program? HESC has not commented yet as the budget
had not been passed at the time of the meeting.
The assumption is that TAP changes will not occur this year.
Training
presentation: Allyson Wynne - Citibank
Helping
Students Help Themselves
Handouts were
disseminated to the group. More can be
obtained by contacting Citibank.
Next Meeting:
Thursday, April 20,
2006