Massachusetts Association of Student Financial Aid AdministratorsExecutive Council Retreat

July 16-17, 2018Newton Marriott

Newton, MA

Monday, July 16thExecutive Council: (Voting Members)Monica Blondin Melissa Metcalf Susan Sullivan Christina Coviello Karen VanDyne Shannon James Kevin DeRuosi Amy Belina Nicole Cunningham Jason Marsala Brooke Barbieri Ebony CarterLisa Talbot

Committees: Siobhan Keenan Maria Morrelli Amy Staffier Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun Jan Combs Arianna Magee Brandon Cipoletta Susan Kolls Jonathan Sparling Shawn Morrissey Ben Parsons Ashley NorwoodThomas Hunt Ina Frye Migdalia Gomez Dawn BatchelorJulie Wickstrom Lauren Sullivan Julie Lawton Beth Feinberg Keenan

Other Attendees:

Motion to start the meeting: MonicaSecond: SusanMeeting started at 10:23

Welcome: Monica Handouts are available WiFi is newton2018 Everyone went around the room and introduced themselves Reviewing the agenda

o Covering handbook, goals, chairs will update on committees, looking at by-laws and everyone will know their roles, breakfast tomorrow and more updates from committees

Name tags raised indicate you have a question or commento Blue name tags are for voting members and green are for committee chairs

Introductions & Ice Breaker: Melissa Ice Breaker

MASFAA Council Orientation: MonicaMission Vision & Goals

Reviewed page 20 of the current handbook

o Understanding roles of co-chairs, responsibilities and expectations, reviewed pages 35-36 of the current handbook

o Removed “MASFAA Newsletter” and changed it to “website and electronic communications”

o When we give committee updates, you can ask questions, we understand that this meeting is earlier this year and many committees may not have met yet

Officer Reports:President-Elect: Melissa

Awards will happen in the fall

Treasurer: Shannon Shannon will work with Karen

Secretary: Christina Have 2 updates to the minutes from Susan Lisa moved to approve the updated minutes and Kevin second, all in favor, motion

passes Send any additional handbook updates to

Past President: Susan Elections next year, looking for President Elect, Secretary, and some Member at Large

positions Last year made the change to change the sector Member at Large to a generalist for the

proprietary section because we couldn't get people to run for the small sector

MASFAA Handbook & By-Laws: Susan To be an active member, you must be working at a school and actively engaged in

administering aid If someone leaves mid-year, the president can appoint someone to take on the position

for the remainder of the term Elections should be run by January 1st of each year, most positions are 2-year

commitments and run from July 1st to June 30th

1/4 of the association is a quorum We should post the meeting times on the website because all meetings are open to the

entire membership Officers are expected to attend all meetings, can’t have more than 2 consecutive

absences, or 3 overall, must let the president know if you can’t attend 7 members constitutes a quorum Need to work on writing the history from 2009 to the present

o Christina suggested making the timeframe shorter, so that it’s less to write for one person

o Christina and Susan will work on coordinating this

Finance committee will meet this afternoon, likely to approve budget at level funding but if committees have a need for additional funding, come back later and request it

Scholarships, some years we have given these to the conference, if you know someoneo College Board Scholarships ended in 2005o Have 2 scholarships for the Leadership Academy to attend the conference,

maybe use one for Just the Factso Susan K. suggested a presenter scholarship for new presenters, to pay for their

conference registrationo Let’s wait for Karen to be at the table to discuss the scholarships

Handbook is a great tool to help you throughout the year

Break at 11:10 to 11:23

Monica talked about member at large positions responsibility for the year end event, venue ideas and an event with some content

Committee Reports & Goal Setting:Strategic Plan/Goals: Susan

Developing a plan to increase membership and diversity among schools who have not been involved

o Can we do some outreach to those schools, Aid Directors and/or Presidentso We have received feedback that schools would like us to look at the EASFAA

model but we would have to do some research and look at the financials Plan to increase volunteers Will make required fields on the membership renewal for title and institution Investing in a webinar platform Ideas for increasing conference attendance

o Is it content, location, school budgets Training has been great, high attendance at JTF, MLA, and other events

o Trying to get people to be credentialed and to teach at these programs Communication

o Using the new website better and utilize its functionality Government Relations and advocacy Finances

o Use reserves to support the goalso Update the exhibitor fee structure

These goals will take us through June 2020o Looking to create a task force to lead some of these, involve membership since

that’s an item on the list to increase membership, think about this in Octobero Ebony volunteered to help with the task forceo EASFAA was really able to increase membership due to the Tuesday webinars,

but only 1 person was doing the membership and then everyone would sit and

watch the webinar together; institutional membership would be better for schools with 6 or more members and increased from $50 to $60

o MASFAA would lose money for the large schools, so need to think about different tiers of institutional memberships

o Most webinars were done by EASFAA members, but occasionally subject-matter experts

Ebony asked about how members at large can get access to the list of constituents, we will have that once people submit membership information

Beth asked if membership is down, Susan explained that it is Meetings for this academic year

o To be consistent, keep it to the 3rd or 4th Friday of the montho Monica will have some at WPI and will send an email to the group to see if

anyone wants to host one of the other meetingso September 28th, October 26th, November is the day before the conference

(11/14-11/15) November 13th, December 21st, January 18th, February 15th, March 22nd, April no meeting, May hold to combine with the Leadership Academy’s final session, June year-end event, Retreat in July/August

Conference: Susan/Jonathan Questions about the structure of the conference, want to end with something happy, a

closing keynote with inspiration, currently the federal update is at the end Shawn said that many people stay for the federal update and that keeps people there as

a draw, so it would depend on the keynote Who owns the powerpoint? Who presents? We’ve lost a great speaker in Zac moving

to Chicago Melissa notes that it has gone from 3 days to 2 due to content over the years, if it’s not

federal or regulatory you will lose some of the more senior people in the audience Shawn said it’s strict for federal trainers and they can’t speak off script or off topic Julie L. thinks that it’s time to give some feedback to the Dept of Education on the

quality of the speakers Ebony suggested that the raffle winners must be present to win, that would keep people

thereo Julie W. said that not everyone goes to the second day

Maybe put the NASFAA speaker at the end Lisa suggested putting some college presidents on a panel Melissa agrees and thinks that the content is a draw more than the raffle Julie W. explained that at FSA there was a lack of knowledge in presenters and that is an

issue with a lot of the federal trainers, membership shouldn’t suffer because they can’t really give us the information we’re looking for

Could we instead pull a panel of people from schools who are involved with compliance, using people who are more dynamic speakers

Melissa asked who we can talk to, for feedback, Lisa said she will ask Zack who we can give feedback to

Lisa suggested the conference committee ask AICUM if they have any speakers or connections

The committee has had 1 meeting and is interested in growing the committee and would like some sub-committees to split up some of the work

Have 3 theme ideas: in Southbridge its a former optic lab, topics around seeing, the chairs will work on a specific theme and report back

Conference 2020 hoping to get RFPs, this hotel is a possibility, what about western MA, Springfield possibly? There was a lot of construction in prior years, casino scheduled to open this fall, so that construction will be complete this year; chairs will look into it

Susan S. said that the committee should feel empowered to make decisions, but run them by the president

Keynote ideas Dariel Henry from Massasoit works with black male students, speaks about access and retention, young and enthusiastic

Call for session proposals is coming out this week Monica will also send an email blast for committee members and chairs Can we do a session on getting involved in MASFAA? It has often been done during

lunch Can each committee do a poster and have them around during a meal (maybe

breakfast)? Have a table, depending on vendor space? How can we focus on newer and younger staff, bring back a first year reception Kevin said it’s harder to work in time for meet and greet sessions and networking fun

when the conference is already down to less than 2 days Melissa said we need to think about how this population feels about volunteerism, and

think about different ideas on how to get the young people engaged Susan wants us to talk to managers to get them to encourage their staff Ebony said let’s use enticing language on the website Kevin suggested “MASFAA on the road” and do coffee and donuts at various schools Julie W. how can we link career with volunteerism, they stay in jobs for less than 2

years, how do we entice them to think about it as a career, more than 2 years Amy commented about making connections professionally, what are the skills younger

staff can develop and improve on Julie L. conferences used to be more about getting information (now we can get it

quicker and online) and the social atmosphere was fun, people value their personal time and maybe don’t want to give it to work

Monica asked if we collect info in membership of when was the last conference you attended

Jonathan mentioned the possibility of streaming a session, to promote the 2020 conference by highlighting what people are missing

Maybe extend the conference a little bit later on the second day, get 2 full days Thought about a survey to people who haven’t attended and ask why, what’s the draw

to get your team to the conference

Lunch break at 12:37 to 1:36Dinner moved to 5:00

We will start at 10 tomorrow breakfast will be 8:30-10:00

Development: Lisa March meeting we discussed the lack of vendor participation at the conference, Lisa

asked vendors for feedback We voted to reduce the fee for the vendors, but we have some other opportunities that

we could look at so that we’re not going to lose money overall Using other PD&T events or other MASFAA events and symposiums throughout the year

to have vendors sponsor and get their name outo What about for schools (like BU), is there an issue with participation? o Julie W. said it would be ok since the events are free to members, but couldn’t

participate in any giveaways This would be managed by Lisa’s member at large position If more than 1 was interested, it would be first come, first served What about non-lender vendors, it would be cheaper for them to not sponsor at

conference and just do the financial literacy event (for example) Should they be a conference sponsor in order to even be eligible to sponsor the other

events Would they have to sponsor an event that relates to their product? Bingo or some other activity to get NASFAA’s take on sponsorships from Justin Draegar: sponsorships go into a pool of

money, not for something specific, items like lanyards are less than $10 so that’s ok. Julie L. has an email from Justin and will forward it to the group

Susan K. asked if the sponsorship for items went towards the price of the item Part of the sponsorship agreement was that the name and logo would be in a banner ad

on the website, due to website limitations we had problems with that last year

Membership: Dawn We have 670 active members, don’t know how many have renewed yet Request to add job title and institution

o Julie W. talked to Greg and there isn’t a way to make it mandatory, only have a drop-down for “type” like 4-year private, and this can’t be updated by the user if they change jobs

Knowing where people are working may be beneficial for other people to know, like speakers or presenters

Technology: Julie Looking for a co-chair One thing that’s positive is the creation of the google account so items can be stored on

google drive Will need some help with FAFSA Day Webinars are also on the technology list Is there an RFI process to get business requirements and information from possible

vendors

Shawn thinks EASFAA uses “go to webinar” Julie wants to see our requirements and then find a vendor, instead of finding vendors

and then seeing if they can meet our requirements Shawn will connect Julie with someone from EASFAA who may have more info on their

process Julie gave a demo on how to post to the website

Early Awareness: Susan for Ashley At Rumney Marsh in Revere, approx 200 students, students were really engaged, staff

and faculty thought it was a great event Due to GearUp no longer being funded schools want the whole school, so will only be

doing 1 carnival each

Financial Wellness: Monica for Chairs Symposium will be Tuesday October 23rd

Agenda will be morning speaker, Margaret Brooks (how to get started or augment your program and the impact of not having this for students) and Paul Gobel in the afternoon (will talk about setting up a peer mentoring program)

Maybe a certificate program for MASFAA members who attend the symposium, MASFAA sessions, or other programs would get a certificate

Erin Lawry wrote a book Broke Millennial, and she charges $5,000 to do a webinar, so that is a bit out of our price range; Elizabeth Coogan from Dept of Ed as possibly doing a session at the conference, she talks about free fin lit resources

FAFSA Day: Amy, Jan, Jennifer 35 events over 33 sites, 1400 students, 240 volunteers 99% rated the assistance they got as excellent/very good/good Challenge Day winners were announced who got 2 $750 scholarships, gave 3 due to tie

o Most improved was Lawrence High Schoolo Highest completion rate tie City on a Hill Charter School Berkshire Arts and

Technology Charter School with 100% but it was 2 smaller schools (thinking about separating smaller and larger schools)

Over 2 million FAFSAs completed nationally, MA is ranked 4th

1 official FAFSA Day on 11/4/18 Have 28 sites confirmed Twitter chats, generates great conversation, anyone can join

Break at 2:35 to 3:03

PD&T: Beth, Lauren, Julie Thanks to Nicole and Christina for continuing to assist though they are not chairs Designed to have 3 chairs, one for JTF, one for MLA, one for tax and other JTF on Wednesdays in the fall in Wellesley, dates are tentative and presenters are being

asked

o Format is changing a bit for this year, we’ve been using the NASFAA Core materials and need to use credentialed presenters, we are finding that the group isn’t getting credentialed, so that’s not the draw

o We will still use the Core materials to work from but only a few sessions will be for credentials, other sessions will be lighter and less dense material

o Will work with Dana Kelly at NASFAAo Other sessions will be more fun and interactive, loosely using the materialso Instructors can use other formats, i.e. brainshark, and be more creative to

hopefully engage the students in a different way Want to use the Core materials for additional trainings for specific modules for more

advanced staff, using credentialed staff Found the materials to be a little bit too much for new staff Nominations for the Leadership Academy will be coming out shortly

o Looking to beef up the schedule a bit Tax Training: we have spoken to Robert Weinerman for December (avoid FSA when

picking dates)o Keep it at Wellesley? Other location ideas?o We had about 100 attendeeso Will likely stick with the 2-day format, 1 for novice, 1 for business taxes and

advanced Iron Bridge is working on online modules $250 per person, but $200 if they pay for the

$50 MASFAA membership; will be a 9-hour trainingo Looking at a release date of 12/15/18 for this online toolo Also looking to sell this product to schools (larger schools) so more than 1 person

in the office could access the informationo Host our workshop first and advertise this as a compliment to that or for people

who are unable to attend the workshopo Follow up with other states who are using this product to get their feedback

Do we want to see if he would arrange a multi-year contract with a cost reduction Held a Support Staff workshop in June for about 40 people at WPI Hoping to use the June timeslot for a workshop for manager-level session Susan S. maybe instead of the book project, use the Leadership Academy group to come

up with a project and presentation on communication and using the new electronic tools, look at the strategic plan and see what they can help with

Thinking about adding coffee to the MLA sessions

Dinner will be here at 5:00Full breakfast tomorrow starting at 8:30 until 10:00Reviewed tomorrow’s schedule, there will be a brainstorming session

Meeting suspended at 3:27

Tuesday, July 17th

Executive Council: (Voting Members)Monica Blondin Melissa Metcalf Susan Sullivan Christina Coviello Karen VanDyne Shannon James Kevin DeRuosi Amy Belina Nicole Cunningham Jason Marsala Brooke Barbieri Ebony CarterLisa Talbot

Committees: Siobhan Keenan Maria Morrelli Amy Staffier Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun Jan Combs Arianna Magee Brandon Cipoletta Susan Kolls Jonathan Sparling Shawn Morrissey Ben Parsons Ashley NorwoodThomas Hunt Ina Frye Migdalia Gomez Dawn BatchelorJulie Wickstrom Lauren Sullivan Julie Lawton Beth Feinberg Keenan

Other Attendees:

Meeting started at 10:05

Committee Updates Continued:GPCC: Ina

Usually have the symposium in February, looking at the 8th and 15th at the Harvard Grad School

Up to 14 committee members Will be updating the list of resources on the website shortly Plan on contributing some articles and presenting at the MASFAA Conference

AID: Maria Hasn’t met yet, Siobhan is the new co-chair Heard from some people after the symposium that they were interested in joining the

committee Had about 50 people (non-northeastern) 75 total at the symposium event in May,

hoping to recreate that success next year Karen may have space at Hult at the end of May Jason suggested keeping a master calendar of all MASFAA events

o Monica asked if the website has a calendar function Maria has some new ideas that are not event based that she’d like to move forward

with A handout of resources, issues and resources on the website so that schools don’t have

to recreate the wheel on these topics Resources for Guidance counselors to help with incoming students

EASFAA: Shawn Wasn’t able to attend the ESAFAA retreat, but next meeting with be October Next Conference will be in Portland, ME 5/5-5/8 at the Westin Portland Harborview,

great location

EASFAA just voted to go to institutional membershipso Individual memberships $60 and institutional membership options after 5

individual memberships for 6 or more will be $300o Non-aid people (bursar etc.) can participateo Lisa asked if the same model was for associate members, Shawn will check thato Christina asked for clarification about how individuals will still have ownership

and voting rights, Shawn explained that one person at an institution will provide a list of everyone who is part of the institutional membership

o This will be for the 19/20 yearo We can start looking at this option for MASFAA, but don’t want to lose money

from big schools with 20+ memberships Trainings continue and partnering with the states, PD&T will be contacted

Treasurer: Karen and Shannon We did well this year with the exception of one committee who had an unexpected

expense Due to the timing of the retreat, Karen would like to level fund all committees and they

can come back to request additional funding Susan K. asked for clarification if it’s level to the allocation or expenditures - Karen said

it’s the allocation It’s up to the committee to organize the breakdown Shannon said there’s a gmail account for Conference that has some itemized

information Susan and Jonathan can pull from FAFSA Day will spend less because they can repurpose printed materials from last year Nicole suggested that PD&T be broken out per event The last meeting we talked about moving money from Eastern Bank to Edward Jones The Finance Committee will review the budgets and moving the money to Edward Jones

later today Lisa asked why there wasn’t a separate line for Development, rather than putting it in

Conference Reminder to co-chairs not here, please indicate the line item on your request so it can

be allocated to the correct line of the budget

Brainstorming on engaging new and younger professionals and getting people involved (all but finance committee members)Brooke Barbieri took notes:

Membership – Brainstorming Session about new volunteersMelissa Metcalf – Focus on millennial aspect/careerSusan Kolls – focus on all new membersRecommendations:

Susan – 3 ideas:

Scholarship for the conference – Presenter Scholarship, Counselor Scholarship (responsibilities – reporting back to office/masfaa about first experience on blog or FB page)

Mentoring at MASFAA Emerging Leaders – Shadow Exec Council Members or members of committee Relating it back to career

Jan Combs Using website to profile members of MASFAA and relating it to career advancement

Ebony Carter Focus on new professional and fun aspect of committee participation Make it cooler to be involved and less rigid. Remove stigma/façade of being new in

career Recognition of folks not participating and direct outreach targeted at the

directors/deans/presidents

Maria Morelli Supports Task Force idea for new professional involvement Provide networking experience for new professionals outside of the conference EASFAA does task force – we could do a task force of new professionals Ask them what they want – survey? Ask people in offices about short term participating

and their wants MASFAA bowling Engage work study students – financial aid as a career / scholarship for work study to go

to MASFAA conference Stamp or certificate for New Professional Track suggestion Asking why to institutions or non-participants

Jennifer Use more social media to get information about MASFAA out there

Julie Also agrees with asking new members or non-members what they want out of MASFAA

Sean Agrees – leadership academy comprises task force to get more young volunteers Emerging leaders getting out to wider audience One day symposium focused on new professionals MASFAA track for new professionals

Brooke Phone call/emails from MASFAA leadership academy members about membership to

folks who have not participated

Jonathan Young professional member position on Executive Council

Jason Two facets – panel of leaders in industry about the personal and professional benefits of

participation

Nicole Using completion of tracks to reward participants in some way

Finance Committee: (Christina, Susan, Monica, Melissa, Karen, Shannon, Lisa) Notes are saved separately

Break at 11:21Reconvene at 11:52

New Business: Christina and Karen had discussed with Shawn yesterday the idea of trading in our 2015

apple laptops, which are not very easy to use with the specific treasurer’s software and the secretary computer doesn’t have microsoft word

Should we trade the computers in? Donate them? Keep them as extra computers to use at MASFAA Conference and events?

Karen, Christina, and Shannon will research some pricing options and bring it back to the group at the next meeting.

We can also think about just buying microsoft office for the secretary computer.

Motion to adjourn the meeting: SusanSecond LisaAll in favorMeeting ended at 11:57