Packing Slip

item	Electronic Processes - Providing 24/7 Access
contact	Bradley Honious (GateWay Community College) bradley.honious@gwmail.maricopa.edu
credits	Rigina Ceo, Student Services Specialist Butch Hoffman, Lead Computer Operator Jim Ierley, Programmer/Analyst Philip Knight, Student Services Specialist Les Miller, Student Services Specialist Bud Pomeroy, Programmer/Analyst Nicole Porter, Student Services Specialist Suzanne Ringle, Coordinator of Student Services Tony Zeka, Web Technician
college(s)	GateWay Community College
discipline(s)	all
summary	Our innovation is not a result of one single project but is a compilation of electronic enhancements, streamlined processes, cross-functional staff, and student education to increase customer satisfaction and that virtually ‘reinvents’ the financial aid process, moving the processing of financial aid into the 21st century.
details	(This initiative is GateWay's 2004 Innovation of the Year.) Our office has been very progressive over the last two years, we believe the enhancements we've employed are not only innovative, but are student centered, fiscally sound, and adhere to the vision, mission, and values of the Maricopa County Community College system. Our innovation is not a result of one single project but is a compilation of electronic enhancements, streamlined processes, cross-functional staff, and student education. The financial aid arena is historically slow to employ change so has encumbered itself with arduous processes that result in a glut of unnecessary information and contribute to student dissatisfaction. Below is a list of implementations we've employed to increase customer satisfaction and that virtually 'reinvents' the financial aid process, moving the processing of financial aid into the 21st century. * Electronic Active Award Letter * Electronic Book Voucher * Electronic Loan Entrance & Exit Counseling * Electronic Loan Master Promissory Note * Electronic Scholarship Application * Electronic Summer Aid Application * Electronic Scholarship Authorization Form * Electronic Debt Management System Brief descriptions of the electronic products and processes Electronic Active Award Letter - Once a student is awarded, our office mails a financial aid notification post-card to the students with directions on how to retrieve their award information online. The student can sign on to a secure website and access information from their award letter. At this site the student can view their offered awards and accept, decline, or reduce certain awards along with notifying our office of a change in credit hours. Students are provided with links to a financial aid notification, check disbursement, and book voucher information along with registration options and other important information. Our office then retrieves this information from reports ran each morning so we can process the changes. The students may also complete an electronic loan counseling session and/or an electronic master promissory note (if they are accepting student loans). Students have access to their financial aid awards 24 hours a day seven days a week so they can conduct their financial aid business when it is convenient for them. Electronic Book Voucher - Students who are awarded financial aid will have a line of credit opened at the bookstore for them to use for a three- week period each semester. A file is generated that checks the student record and determines eligibility, enrolled hours, awarded aid, financial holds, etc. The file is created and sent to the bookstore to upload in their system. The students go directly to the bookstore during the posted dates and charge books and supplies. The charges are then sent to IT to upload in the student information system nightly. The upload on information saves many human resource hours for financial aid, cashier's, and the bookstore and increases efficiency in processing charges and vouchers. Electronic Loan Counseling Sessions - Students are required to complete loan entrance counseling as a first time borrower of student loans and exit counseling when they leave the college. At GateWay students complete these sessions online through Mapping-Your-Future web. Our office retrieves the completers list daily and through the use of an access program we upload verification into the student information system. This process takes less than a minute and saves many human resource hours. Electronic Master Promissory Note - Students who borrow student loans are required to sign a master promissory note. Sallie Mae Servicing provides an online MPN for students to electronically sign. Since our process drives students to the electronic award letter we have created a link from the award letter to the online MPN, which, makes all electronic products available from the award letter. Our process has allowed us to certify a student loan when awarded, and the online MPN is available for the student when they receive their award notice. Once it is completed the bank has the MPN in real time reducing the time to receive a loan from 10-14 days to approximately 3days. Electronic Scholarship Application - Our students apply for GateWay's General Scholarship through a web based scholarship application. The information is collected through an access program which, allows us to run queries based on specific criteria to award scholarships. Also, the database can be used to query for outside donors looking for a specific type of student for scholarship funds. Electronic Summer Application - Beginning in March our students will complete a summer application to notify our office they will be attending in the summer. The information will be submitted through a web- based form into an access database and students will be awarded by the date they apply. This allows our office to notify students of their summer awards well before the summer session begins. It also increases efficiency by reducing paper flow in our office. Electronic Scholarship Authorization Form - Program offices on campus who award scholarships from various funds can notify the financial aid office through a web based scholarship authorization form via the Intranet. They can award, increase, or cancel a student's award. We receive the information via email and process the request. This again increases efficiencies by eliminating paper and the need for paper storage. Electronic Default Management System (DMS) - Our office receives a master file from USA Funds each month with payment history on all former borrowers to upload into DMS a USA Funds product. This allows us to send pre-created letters from office notifying students who are delinquent on student loans offering assistance, from our office, with their loan. We have assisted many former students in obtaining debt relief in the form of forbearances or deferments and we consider this a center piece to our default prevention plan. Quality - These processes has allowed our office to process and deliver financial aid to students with the highest quality. Students can retrieve their award information, conduct business from one website, and have all the necessary instructions for them to complete the financial aid process 24 hours a day 7 days a week on the web allowing students to complete their processes when they want to and frees up valuable time for students to concentrate on their education. Efficiency - The use of technology increased our efficiency tremendously. We have processed much more volume of students and dollar amounts with the same staffing and no increased budget. Our students are awarded very timely and our office even during peak times we are no more than 5-7 days backlogged win paper work. Student service has increased and the efficiencies have allowed us to enhance our educational component and relationship building with our students and prospective students. A student can apply for financial aid and conceivable receive financial aid in approximately 1-3 days after we receive a completed record from the federal processor. Since we do not print award letters we do not have excess filing in our office. Our preferred lenders fund the post-card for the "Your Electronic Award" saving our office printing cost, award letter paper cost, and envelope cost as well as human resource cost. Effectiveness - In this instance, effectiveness is measured by the increase in number of students receiving aid, increase in total dollar of aid received, increase in FTSE, increased efficiency and customer service levels. In 2001 GateWay had 1451 financial aid recipients, 799 received Title IV funds, and 663 received Pell Grants. The total aid paid in 2001 was $2,327,743. In 2003 GateWay had 2521 financial aid recipients, 1891 received Title IV funds, and 1528 received Pell Grants. The total aid paid in 2003 was $9,664,165 and we expect 2004 to increase to close to $11,000,000. We believe we provide students with access to an education and give them choices of funding opportunities in an efficient and very effective manner. GateWay has also experienced a FTSE and total number of credit hours increase generated by financial aid over the years. Fall 2001 (FTSE=532, TTL Hours=8434) for Fall 2003 (FTSE=1306, TTL Hours=19589) Learning - We have hosted many of the other colleges to our office to view our processed and offered assistance for them to start the processes. The online book voucher was initially created partially at PVCC and we enhanced their product to make it a 360- degree process. SMCC, MCC, SCC, and EMCC are in the process of implementing it. Other product implementations are in the infancy stages at MCC. The electronic book voucher process has also made its way to Western Nevada Community College as we hosted their new director of financial aid for a day. We also presented a poster session on the electronic office at the MCCCD Student Success Conference and made a presentation to the Chancellor's Executive Council. Creativity -We believe some of the products are very innovative by themselves and others were developed for school use however we believe we used much creativity in packaging the products and adapting them to meet the needs of our students. Using the electronic products creatively coupled with cross-training all employees to enhance customer service and the streamlining of procedures has assisted in making our office more efficient and fun place to work, year round! Timeliness -We started implementing these innovative processes and products over the last two years and they have been very instrumental in helping us achieve our goal of being a full service student financial aid office. Over the past three semesters, including the summer, our products and processes have been in use and students tell us all the time how much easier it has been for them. We will continue to research available technology and review our processes to become even more efficient in the future. Our top priority is to become 100 % paper free office in the next few years. Collaboration - Our processes are constantly reviewed for enhancements. We work closely with the district office programmers and student financials, our Technology Services Department, our Web Development Office, Sallie Mae, USA Funds, Student Loan Funding, Paradise Valley Community College and other Maricopa Community Colleges to look for better ways of conducting business and to determine if things can be done differently with the use of technology. We owe a lot of our success to programmers and technology experts that made our processes become reality. Our creation of an electronic oriented office has been a collaborative effort since we started moving forward and we expect the teamwork of the district office, community college financial aid offices and technology support services to continue well into the future. Replication - Many of our electronic procedures are in the process of being replicated currently. With minimal effort and strong support form the information technology folks the systems in place at GateWay can be implemented at any college. Some of the products were designed with district programmers and already can be simply sent electronically to our sister institutions. The products created by Sallie Mae and USA Funds are web- based products available free to schools that use them as partners, all Maricopa Colleges currently use both Sallie Mae and USA Funds. Some data retrieval from the SIS is required to interface with some of the products, however, we have already created the process and other schools can duplicate it rather easily. Note! As a professional courtesy to the owner of this package, if you use some aspect of this package or have some thoughts about it, please share your feedback via the comments form below.
web links	http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/innovate/ Maricopa Community Colleges Innovation of the Year Progra http://enroll.gatewaycc.edu/ GateWay Community College Enrollment and Financial Aid web site
supplements	These items are licensed under a Creative Commons License Innovation of the Year Description (document) GWCC.pdf (143.6 kB) Note! As a professional courtesy to the owner of this package, if you use some aspect of this package or have some thoughts about it, please share your feedback below.
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extra	Last modified: Nov-22-2004 Date created: Apr-01-2004 Visitor count: 3316 Dublin Core Metadata record This package is included in the Innovation of the Year Awards 2004 special collection.