New Financial Aid Program adds up for HCC students
Dec 17, 2015
Houston Community College (HCC) awards more than $200M in Financial Aid every academic year to approximately 40,000 students, so you can imagine the enormous task the coordinators of those funds have. Their titles are the same, but their duties are quite different. They are financial aid associates, who make sure students who qualify for financial aid get their funds.
Some financial aid associates work at the HCC campuses on the “front line” helping students fill out the necessary forms to start the financial aid process. The financial aid associates at the HCC district receive that paperwork and handle the “back end” by carrying the process through to the award stage.
Sounds like a well-oiled machine, but according to JoEllen Soucier, executive director of the Financial Aid Office and Boni Jacobs, manager of the Financial Aid Processing Center at the HCC Administration building, there was room for improvement.
“The campus associates handle the customer service side, but they never really see what happens after they scan and link the documents,” said Jacobs. “It’s like gathering all of the ingredients for a cake and never seeing the finished baked product.”
So Jacobs, with the support of Soucier, implemented the Financial Aid Exchange Program, an innovative way to bring district and campus associates together for one week to learn both sides of the financial aid process and put faces to the names on the emails and voices on the other side of the phone. The ultimate goal is to make the process smoother for the 40,000 HCC students who receive financial aid.
“If employees only know what is going on at their particular campus, that is what will be relayed to the students,” said Jacobs. “Bringing employees together from all campuses will create consistency for students across the whole district.”
Whitnie Smith and Tanika Aggison are associates at the district office and see the benefits of the Financial Aid Exchange Program.
“When we return forms back to the campus associates they don’t always know the rationale and then have a hard time explaining that to the student,” said Smith. “I think if they see what we do and why we do it, it will help build a better relationship and better service to our students.”
“I like it for the simple fact that we get to know our co-workers,” said Aggison. “A lot of networking can be achieved through this program. Typically I would have never spoken with the campus associates because we don’t have a lot of face to face interaction.”
Jessica Jones and Carmen Franco work in the financial aid offices at Southwest and Southeast Colleges respectively and on a busy day, can see at least 50 students. They are both HCC graduates who received financial aid as students.
“I think the exchange program is a great idea because we rarely get a chance to see what goes on in the system and how their experience is different from ours,” said Jones. “With that knowledge, we can better help each other and our students.”
Franco appreciates the hard work her counterparts at the district put in each and every day.
“Just like the students expect a lot from financial aid, we expect a lot from the processing center in regards to processing the awards on time,” she said. “Now we get to see what they do and how much work they have, we will have a better grasp with regards to their workload.”
“The Financial Aid Exchange Program is a great example of how HCC is improving the student experience which is one of our top priorities as we transform into the college of the future,” said Dr. Cesar Maldonado, HCC chancellor.
Soucier hopes this program will inspire other departments to also determine how they can take actions to improve the student experience at HCC.
To learn more about the HCC transformation process visit hccs.edu/transformation.