Let’s talk about NASFAA 2023 - what an event! With over 2,600 registered attendees representing more than 975 institutions, NASFAA was the place to be for financial aid professionals. From the dynamic, high-energy welcome reception to the packed agenda, attendees dove deep into all things financial aid, including best practices and ever-changing regulations as well as new tools and technologies that improve processes for managing financial aid and scholarships
As a sponsor of the event, Regent Education had the opportunity to connect with many attendees to discuss all the exciting developments happening with our solutions. Here are a few highlights from the week.
A Packed House for our Introduction to Regent Fund Lunch & Learn
Institutional scholarships help institutions increase enrollment and compete for top students. But many financial aid officers and scholarship managers find it difficult to maximize their institutional scholarships, and as a result, they unknowingly leave valuable dollars on the table.
Bogged down by manual, time-consuming processes, they struggle to gain a complete picture of all eligible applicants across data sets. In fact, attendees of the lunch & learn cited “identifying eligible students” as their top challenge. Couple that with the inability to gain a holistic view of all available awards, including those that were unused, canceled, or unaccepted, and the challenges become even more acute.
Based on the popularity of our lunch & learn entitled Introduction to Regent Fund, it’s clear that managing institutional scholarships is a challenge for many institutions. In our packed room, we shared how Regent Fund helps financial aid officers and scholarship managers maximize institutional scholarship dollars so they can make every dollar count. With Regent Fund, institutions can reduce manual processes and automate the awarding process, providing a holistic view of eligible students and available awards so they can quickly and efficiently award - and re-award - scholarships to the students you most want to enroll.
Using Regent Fund, financial aid officers and scholarship managers can:
- Find and identify qualifying students using a complete view of student data across scholarship applications, ISIRs, and their financial aid system, SIS, and CRM
- Gain a complete view of eligible applicants using two-way integration of student data
- Use powerful sorting and weighting capabilities to match, rank, prioritize, and identify the right applicants for their institutional scholarship dollars, enabling the redeployment of unused, canceled, or unaccepted scholarship dollars to the candidates they most want to enroll
- Easily share insights with donors and stakeholders so they can see the impact of their generous donations to your scholarship fund
If you missed our lunch & learn but are interested in learning more about Regent Fund, please request a demo.
Another highlight from this year’s NASFAA was the announcement of the new guides for financial aid and registrar leaders. Created in partnership with C-BEN and AACRAO, these guides aim to help professionals adopt and grow competency-based education at their institutions.
The first guide, designed for financial aid leaders, provides guidance on how to administer federal, state, and institutional funds to learners enrolled in CBE programs. Because CBE measures learning through mastery not time in seat, financial aid offices need systems and processes to manage awards across standard and nonstandard terms.
Later this year, we will release the full, comprehensive guide for both financial aid leaders and registrars. Developed in partnership with AACRAO, the comprehensive guide also supports registrars to ensure student records reflect mastery of competencies, track data aligned with satisfactory academic progress, and contribute to new learning and employment records that are digital and competency-based.
We revealed the first guide during breakfast with C-BEN President Charla Long. In her discussion with attendees, Ms. Long stressed the importance of putting the needs of learners first, and removing barriers that prevent them from reaching their potential. She also reinforced the importance of campus-wide commitment to prioritizing learners as a hallmark of successful, high-quality CBE programs.
These guides will provide best practices that help financial aid and the registrar’s office ensure their CBE programs are student-centric, speed up the implementation time, and save time and money.
Digital versions of the guides for both financial aid and registrars will be available later in July.
Scholarship Awarding Excellence: Bellevue University’s Journey from Manual to Automated
Finally, another packed room for Bellevue University’s session on their journey from manual to automated using Regent Fund. During the session, Christopher Simpson, Senior Director, Financial Aid at Bellevue University shared how Regent Fund eliminated manual, time-consuming, error-prone processes, enabling them to process complex funds with ease.
The highlight of the session was when Mr. Simpson shared "With Regent Fund, what used to take 3 months now takes as little as 20 minutes from application to awarding." That’s an amazing result.
He also shared how the team at Bellevue University:
- Analyzed enrollment and admission pain points to bring about a holistic solution
- Reset their goals and changed their philosophy regarding scholarships
- Engaged key stakeholders from planning to implementation
Regent Education was proud to be a sponsor of this year’s NASFAA event and looks forward to continuing the great conversations shared during our meet & greets, at our booth, and even in the hallways between sessions.
Didn’t have a chance to attend NASFAA - or missed catching up with us at the event? No problem! We would love to chat with you about how Regent Education can automate financial aid and scholarship management for your institution. Please request a demo and we’ll be in touch soon!
