JUNE 2004

SASFAA President's Annual Report continued...

Lender Liaison, Amy Moser, worked very hard to bring lender issues to the attention of the SASFAA Board and to the membership. Through articles in the Newsletter and to the Board, information was disseminated to give updated knowledge and concerns.

At the SASFAA annual conference in Birmingham, Amy visited with staff at each vendor booth and discussed with them how important their participation was to SASFAA from a lender liaison perspective. She equally explained how their attendance to various SASFAA activities gives lenders a face to recall.

Amy made the suggestion that more communication should take place between committee members throughout the year. This communication should then be directed back to the membership conveying pertinent information regarding the student-lending arena.

SASFAA Management Institute Committee Chair, Karen Fooks, worked very hard to begin the process of planning and implementing the 2004 SASFAA Management Institute. Her committee was composed of seasoned individuals, many of which were past presidents, who had previous experiences with this wonderful initiative.

The committee is still in the planning stages for the Institute which will be held Dec 10-12, 2004 in Asheville, NC. The Institute will be designed as a "different" kind of learning experience than most SASFAA activities. The primary goal for the conference is to give senior financial aid administrators skills to become leaders and "players" on their campuses through a discussion of current issues and trends related to financial aid in higher education and the skills/resources needed to address them.

Suggestions from the committee include:

  • Keep the topics and level of discussion well above the day-to-day financial aid processing, regulations and practices.
  • Design the content so that senior financial aid administrators are challenged to think at a higher level and gain added expertise that makes them invaluable to the institution and its leadership.
  • Start early and plan committee meetings well in advance. The longer you wait, the more difficult it is to get everyone's calendar together.
  • Read the notes, minutes, evaluations and budgets from prior institutes.
  • Assess the attendee make-up, if available, to determine if the institutes have been achieving their aim of attracting the targeted audience and, if they have not, identify ways to resolve that issue.

Membership Chair, Forrest Stuart, worked very hard with his committee, which was composed of representatives from the nine SASFAA states, several from various other roles within SASFAA, and several from the Board.

The main goals of the SASFAA Membership Committee were to:

  • Improve communication about the benefits and purposes of SASFAA membership. This was accomplished via a letter from the SASFAA president and membership chair. That same letter was placed on the SASFAA web site and included actual comments from current SASFAA members. The “paper” letter was mailed to current and past members as available via the SASFAA database. The mailing also included institutions whom we had no record of past SASFAA membership.
  • Assist with the implementation of the online database, via ATAC. This was accomplished by keeping current with 03-04 membership until the data was transferred to ATAC. Once online, individuals were responsible for maintaining their current information.
  • Collect further data for statistical purposes. This was accomplished by adding ethnicity, gender, and year started in financial aid to the membership form.
  • Communicate regularly with the SASFAA Membership Committee to really use their assistance in building more members. This was accomplished by emailing “status reports” of how many SASFAA members each state had at various points in the fiscal year. This helped create a “friendly competition” among state membership chairs.

Forrest further stated that the 2004-05 SASFAA Membership Committee should continue the improvements in communication among the membership. Membership Committee members should utilize the reported statistics to encourage state association members to join SASFAA. The 2004-05 committee should also use the GAP objectives to develop their membership committee tasks. Use of an “Objective-Task” format can be effective in successfully implementing these objectives. The Membership Chair’s time has previously been consumed by data entry. Now, the Membership Chair can focus energy on membership development.

Membership Statistics (as of 03/25/2004) – total membership is 1,393 (02-03 was 1,288):

By State (Alpha): Gender:
AL 157 Male 335
FL 241 Female 698
GA 159 Not Reported 360
KY 94  
MS 78
NC 136
SC 123
TN 140
VA 119
Non-SASFAA 146


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