Dear SCASFAA,

                As I begin my year as President of SCASFAA I want to thank you for placing your confidence in me.  Everyone has been very encouraging and I promise that I will do my best to serve you.   I am pleased to say that we have a spectacular SCASFAA Board who will be the true strength behind our activities this year.

     Serving as your elected Executive Board members are:

     Katie Harrison                    Past-President and Nominations & Elections Chair           

     Elizabeth Milam                  President-Elect and Special Projects Chair

     Carolyn Sparks                  Vice-President and Professional Development Chair

     Kevin Delp                         Secretary and By-Laws Chair

     Melanie Gillespie                 Treasurer and Budget Committee Chair

     Earl Mayo                           Treasurer-Elect

     Allison Keck                       Member-at-Large and Membership Committee Chair

 

     Serving as your Committee Chairs are

     Violette Hunter                  Advisory to CHE

     Deborah Williams             Communications Chair

     Josephine Brown               Consumer Relations Chair

     April Baur                         Counselor Relations Chair

     Reed Allison                      Electronic Services

     Nancy Garmroth                Financial Planning Committee

     Donna Quick                      Global Issues

     Jenny Beakley                    Legislative Relations

     Chuck Sanders                  Loan Agency Liaison

     Kevin Perry                      Long Range Planning

     Jennifer Williams               Program Committee Chair     

     Casey Wallen                    Site Selection

     Nikki Miller                      Sponsorship

                Thank you to each and every one of you who is willing to serve.  Your duties aren’t easy but I know you will each excel at them.  You can’t imagine how much you are appreciated.

Volunteerism

                As we move forwards into the 2014-2015, I would like to encourage our members to update their committee volunteer list and truly consider serving on these committees.  I’ve distributed the current list to the Committee Chairs and asked them to begin building their committees.  We would like to have at least 3 members to each committee, but in some cases we will need far more than that.  In order to provide our members the best services possible you are needed to be involved in helping develop, design and produce these services.  Even if you can’t travel, you can serve by being on conference calls, reviewing and editing material before it is published, or just providing your opinion before we take action.   Please volunteer. 

Transition Meeting and First Board Meeting

Your SCASFAA 2014-2015 Board had its transition meeting on June 19^th and its first board meeting on June 20^th.   Just from the work we did those two days I believe it is fair to say we’re already off to a great start.  Almost all of the board was able to attend.  The 2013-2014 board did a fantastic job and left us in a great place.  We can build upon the work they did and I want to thank them for their hard work and efforts!  Many of the 2014-2015 committee chairs began transitioning with them well before hand and I know they will continue to transition well into the New Year.

After transitioning we held some Team Building activities.  I’m sure many of you have seen the posts on facebook about those.  Our team building activities were fun, but also taught us some important lessons.  We’ve learned that though one person can only juggle a few responsibilities, when we work as a team we can keep more “balls in the air” and still get our tasks done on time.  Yes, sometimes we may drop the ball, but on a good team there’s always someone ready to pick it up.  We also learned that it takes a team who strategizes together to build a successful association.  Yes, sometimes there are others there ready to “tear that tower down”, but if we work as a team and get innovative we can rebuild it quickly and maybe stronger.  

Our first board meeting was a whirlwind as we tried to accomplish a great deal into a small time.  However, I feel that many great decisions were made.  We have laid out an agenda for each chair and board member, selected goals we felt were most important, and redirected our plan when we saw areas that needed emphasis or were not an issue of importance.  We’re focusing our attention on a few major efforts:

•       Offer nationally recognized credential opportunities through Professional Development;
•     Increase member involvement in committees and activities
•      Expand resources to members through our website and other on-line tools;
•       Expand information resources to students, parents and counselors through our website
•       Improve upon effective communication to and between our members and with the public.
•      Build a more accurate financial assessment of our agency through detailed budget analysis and continued fiscal responsibility

Theme

Our theme for 2014-2015 is a Golf theme to complement our Conference location, the Embassy Suites Greenville Golf Resort and Conference Center. 

Our slogan is “SCASFAA Champions: Get in the Zone”.  Champions, because each member of SCASFAA is a champion.  You are champions for your offices, working long hours and overcoming great obstacles to accomplish your duties.  You are champions for your students, going the extra mile to help them complete their applications, counseling them through complicated and often heart-wrenching issues, and guiding them through difficult procedures when they require exceptions to the normal processes.  You are champions for your co-workers, supporting their efforts, encouraging them through difficult times, commiserating them through the hardest times, and celebrating their great successes.  You are champions for our cause, increased access and affordability for college students through financial aid.  You read and interpret complicated regulations, offer your wisdom and counsel to those writing new legislation, and promote the increase of need based aid.  You are all champions, for these reasons and many more. 

“Get In the Zone”, because SCASFAA as an association has overcome so many obstacles to reach the point we are at today.  For many years we’ve trying to reach that point where we can balance our needs with our resources and thanks to the hard work and determination of many board members over many years, we are now on Par and we’re finding ourselves in “the Zone.” We are confident and focused.  If we keep that focus and drive we could make that proverbial “eagle” or even a “hole-in-one”.  Yes, it will take hard work and determination.  You’ve got to Get in the Zone and Stay in the Zone.  We’re there and I believe we can do it.     

Professional Development

                Professional Development is one of SCSAFAA’s greatest strengths.  We do it well and we do it consistently.  Still, for many years SCSAFAA hasn’t expanded upon what we do.  Certainly there is nothing wrong with that.  When you do something well, why change it?   However, our members are searching for continued relevance in our training.  We must increasingly justify to our colleges, universities, agencies and other employers why we should be attending these training events annually.  As development funding goes down, more scrutiny is being placed upon every request. We’re now being asked to explain what exactly is new that warrants these additional expenses. As Financial Aid Professionals we know that regulations change every year and we see the value in these training events even if there are only a couple of new topics to discuss.  Our employers don’t always see that, though.   SCASFAA must pursue new opportunities to make our professional development relevant to the fiscal realities we face today. 

As such, SCASFAA has voted to partner with NASFAA to offer National Credentials to our members who attend our Professional Development events.  Those who attend a session taught by a credentialed trainer will have the opportunity to earn NASFAA Credentials for free (a $99 value).  These credentials are nationally recognized and do not expire.

Vice-President Carolyn Sparks is working to develop her Professional Development committee and planning our first event, the New Aid Officers and Intermediate Officers Workshop, in October or November.   President-Elect Elizabeth Milam will be working with the Professional Development Committee to prepare our trainers for these NASFAA Credentials.  We hope to announce to you soon which specific National Credentials will be available through this workshop.

Membership & Peer Support

                Every member of SCASFAA is important and we are striving to meet your needs. We hope you will soon see new features on the website for our Members. Please renew your membership early so you will have access to our member only features.  

Membership dues will need to be paid shortly after renewing and will be required for almost all events and activities.  We realize that there may be times when you can’t forward your membership dues right away.  If this is the case please notify Earl Mayo, Treasurer-Elect, or Allison Keck, Member-at-Large, so we can work with you. 

Advisory to CHE

                Violette Hunter is serving her second year as CHE Advisory Chair and is already working closely with Dr. Woodfaulk and her staff to keep lines of communications open between our association and their office.  Violette will serve as our liaison, so if you have anything you wish to have addressed please feel free to contact her.

Budget and Finance

The Executive Board voted to grant the Conference Committee Chair a SCASFAA Credit Card to meet the rising need to online purchases and reduction in the options for use of delayed billing.

The Budget committee will meet on July 8^th at SWU to establish a final budget and discuss other areas of important regarding finances.

Communications

                Deborah Williams is our Communications Committee Chair for 2014-2015.

Presently there are three forms of communication for SCASFAA, but they all have their own limits.  The Facebook page is for anyone who is for anyone to post on, but is of course only available to those with a facebook page and is not constrained to the SCASFAA Group only.  The Blog is SCASFAA’s way to share public information and announcements that can go to the general public and not just our members.  Only the Communications Chair can post to the Blog and as such you must e-mail her anything you want posted.  Finally, the SCASFAA website has a built in E-mail tool that allows us to e-mail members or select groups of members.  However, only those with Administrative rights to the website (Board Members) can use these e-mails.  

As you can see there is a bit of a gap, which is your ability to communicate with your fellow members outside of Facebook.  SCASFAA used to have a list-serve and we have asked our Communications Committee to make some proposals for reinstating a list serve for members only.  If you believe you have some good information to share, please consider joining that committee.  In the meantime please send Deborah or another Exec. Board member anything you’d like shared on the e-mail blast.  If we can post it for you, we will.

Consumer and Counselor Relations

                Both Consumers and Counselors Relations committees will be working hard on their website pages this year.  We’re hoping to have a great resource for high school counselors and the general public to find good, accurate and concise information for South Carolina Residents on Financial Aid in our state and from the Federal Government.  This would be a single source for all types of aid and use a lot of links to direct people to the best sources of more information. 

We have determined that providing NT4CM training is not plausible this year.  There just isn’t a demand for it.  Instead, April Bauer our Counselor Relations Committee Chair, is seeking opportunities to present to either or both of the two High School Counselor associations in the state.

Josephine Brown, our Consumer Relations Committee chair, is working closely with CHE to begin planning our College Goal SC events this year.  Please consider being a site location and start advertising early.  She’s also researching other Consumer Information for our members, such as a standardized PPT for High School nights.

Electronic Services

                Reed Allison is our Electronic Services Chair and his committee will be working this year to clean up and reorganize the website some more and pursue other ways to integrate our various tools into one location.

Financial Planning

                Nancy Garmroth, despite retiring and starting a new job, has agreed to continue to serve in this year.  She has done a great job bringing us to a more financially secure position and will continue to do so, we know.

Global Issues

                Donna Quick is our Global Issues chair and she will be focusing on several areas, but one in particular area we are pursuing is Women’s Issues in Higher Education.  This is an area that affects not just women but men as well. 

Legislative Relations

                Jenny Bleakly of Clemson University is our Legislative Relations chair this year and she has already begun to adapt to the needs of the position.  She’ll have a tough year ahead of her with all the changes being proposed for HEA reauthorization. We have already reached out to legislators on two separate occasions and will continue to communicate with them as we move forwards with reauthorization.

Loan Agency Liaison

                We have reinstated this position this year to receive information about the lending, guaranty and servicing agencies to find out what is happening directly from a prominent source.  Chuck Sanders from SCSLC has graciously agreed to serve in this position again and has already brought us news.  Guarantee agencies are losing some of their funding which could affect services they offer us.  

Long Range Planning

                Kevin Perry will take the reins of this important committee.  There are many aspects of our organization that are laid out in a five year plan and it will be Kevin’s job to make sure we are on course.

Nominations & Elections

                Past-President Katie Harrison will begin seeking nominations for 2015-2016 elected positions very soon.  Two new questions on the Membership application ask you if you’d be interested in serving as an Elected Official or as a Committee Chair.  Please feel free to indicate yes. Katie’s committee will use this information to identify individuals for nominations.  President-Elect Elizabeth Milam may also be using the information when considering her Committee Chairs.   

Program Chair

                Jennifer Williams is our Program Chair this year and she comes to us with a great deal of experience.  The Greenville Embassy Suites Golf Resort and Convention Center is the location for our conference and as such they became the inspiration to our Golf theme.  The conference will be held April 12^th-15^th and we already know that David Bartnicki is planning to come!

Site Selection

                Casey Wallen is chair of this committee and has already gotten us some basic quotes on locations for 2016 and is started to work on 2017.  2016 is our 50^th anniversary, and President-Elect Elizabeth Milam is already conceiving of ideas to make this a special year.

Sponsorship

                Nikki Miller is our Sponsorship chair. She met her goals last year and is already setting them higher for this year.  If you know of a company that may be a good sponsor, please let her know or even join her committee.

There is so much more I want to tell you about but I will save those conversations for later.  I am at NASFAA right now and there is much I have learned here that I want to tell you about.   

Please feel free to contact me at any point. I am here to serve you and will do my best to meet your needs.

Thank you,

Kenneth Cole

SCASFAA President

2014-2015