Georgia State Report
Suzanne Pittman, GASFAA President

GASFAA’s Fall Conference was held October 13-14 in Macon, Georgia. Pennie Strong and her program committee did a great job with the theme, “Look Sharp, Think Sharp, on the cutting edge of financial aid". We had 319 attendees, 44 of which were new members, and our membership now exceeds 600.

Our pre-conference event was our New Aid Officers Workshop conducted by Melody Hodge and the Professional Development Committee.

The service project for the conference was a Hurricane Relief effort for the financial aid associations of Alabama and Mississippi. We are pleased to report that Jill Rayner and the Community Action Committee organized a raffle where GASFAA members gave $1326.00 to each state for assistance to their members and students. A special thanks goes out to our vendors and sponsors for donating the raffle prizes.

On December 6, GASFAA will hold a joint Bursar/Financial Aid Administrator Workshop to address issues in aid administration that cross departmental lines. We are expecting over 150 participants in this workshop.

On December 7, Gary Mann and the Strategic Planning Committee will hold GASFAA’s first ever Planning Retreat as our Five Year Plan is updated.

The GASFAA Professional Development Committee plans to present the NASFAA Decentralized Training in February.

Georgia is well underway in plans to participate in NASFAA’s College Goal Sunday. Jill Rayner will represent GASFAA on the steering committee.

Kentucky State Report
Shelley Park, KASFAA President

The fall 2005 KASFAA conference was held October 19-21, 2005 at the beautiful Louisville Marriott Downtown and the theme for the conference was Stars, Stripes and the KASFAA Spirit. Over 225 KASFAA members attended and had a variety of sessions to choose from such as Higher Education Law to Balancing Ethics in the Workplace. Many excellent speakers were on hand such as Kathy Makowski from the US Department of Education, Harvey Alston, and a special highlight of the conference was a distinguished group of presenters—Dallas Martin, NASFAA President; Larry Matejka, Exective Director of ISAC; and Tom Layzell from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, to discuss the history and evolution of the Higher Education Act. SASFAA President Guy Gibbs attended and presented to the membership the SAFAA update. Another special highlight of the conference was the unveiling of a new and updated website for KASFAA at www.kasfaa.com. The technology committee, along with help from the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority, made this website happen, and it looks great and the membership is very pleased with the results.

NASFAA decentralized trainings were held on October 27 and November 11, 2005 with 150 people attending the sessions. Cindy Burnett from Western Kentucky University was the instructor for Kentucky for the workshop on campus wide compliance. High school counselors' workshops were held November 3 -18, and KASFAA members conducted training along with ACT and the Kentucky Department of Education for approximately 500 guidance counselors and agency personnel.

Volunteers now number over 100 and growing for our College Goal Sunday on January 29, 2006. KASFAA has over 19 sites throughout the state coordinated for College Goal Sunday and is working with a public relations firm for the promotion of this date in Kentucky.

The spring KASFAA conference will be held April 19-21, 2006 in Lexington, KY.