Executive Committee Meeting Minutes



What's New \| Member Services \| About WASFAA \| Home

updated 4.18.12

Listserv

Home

Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

return to section index

WASFAA Executive Council
Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii
March 4-5, 2002

Present: Addalou Davis, Catherine King-Todd, Doug Severs, David Allen, Steve Herndon, Jannine Oyama, Jacqueline Brathwaite, Barbara Burnett, Kim Naig, Linda Bisesi (for Connie Barton), Frances Dinnan, Ken Jackson, Laura Whitelaw, Wendy Olson

Committee Chairs/Liaisons: Chemene Crawford, Barb Alm, Tami Sato, Kay Soltis, Judy Saling, Jerry Sims, David Caldwell, James White, Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, Don Black, EdFund, Marianna Deeken

Guests: NASFAA Regional visitors: Suzy Allen, President-elect, EASFAA, University of New Hampshire; Zina Haywood, President-elect, MASFAA, Gateway Technical College, Wisconsin; Darry Voigt, President, RMASFAA, Casper College, Wyoming;

Absent: Lana Walter (at NASFAA Leadership Institute); Sam Collie

Meeting called to order at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, March 4, 2002 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Delayed reviewing minutes until after lunch (to give folks a chance to review).

Addalou Davis requested that the EC send her baby pictures of themselves to use at the Newcomer’s Reception in Boise.

Treasurer’s Report
Steve Herndon provided a brief history of the challenges faced this past year. Included in this history were the difficulties encountered by switching accounting years, more people attending Executive Council Meetings, free training for membership, asset reserves losing value due to the drop in the stock market, and offering the second management and leadership institute in October. The second management and leadership institute lost money for a variety of reasons including a reduction in state budgets, the September 11 disaster (people were afraid to fly), and too short of time to plan and notify folks that it was being offered. Steve said we need $400,000 as a reserve (currently, there is less than that) to cover costs for one year. The fiscal committee is looking at this issue and will be coming to the Executive Council with recommendations.

Addalou Davis indicated that we are not offering the spring NASFAA decentralized training to WASFAA members because it is a repeat of other training recently offered.

MOTION: Doug Severs moved that the Treasurer’s Report be approved. Catherine King-Todd seconded. Motion carried.

Nominations and Elections
Doug Severs reported that this was the first time WASFAA held the election electronically; it worked well. There were a few new development issues. Next year the ballot will be out a bit earlier because those development issues have been resolved. 349 members voted. The voting deadline was extended because the membership database was not up-to-date. Doug also sent three e-mails to non-voters reminding them to vote. He had trouble getting resumes/ candidate summaries from some of those running for office; he suggested that it be made clear to those who accept the nomination that this is a requirement.

MOTION: David Allen moved that the ballots be destroyed. Jacqueline Brathwaite seconded. Motion carried.

Jerry Sims suggested including pictures of the candidates along with the resume for next year’s ballots.

Federal Issues
See Tami Sato’s written report. Suzy Allen (regional visitor) indicated Tami’s report was impressive.

Don Black indicated that credit card debt is a huge concern for college students. Reports now indicate that students are now graduating with $6,000-$8,000 of credit card debt.

There will be a session at the WASFAA Conference in Boise re: financial planning, addressing this issue (presented by Brigham Young University, who have had their counselors become financial planners).

There will be only two Electronic Access Conferences next year because the Dept of Ed sends so many of their folks (it is hard for so many to be out of the office for so much time).

Newsletter
Judy Saling suggested two ways to save money: (1) could do newsletters quarterly, and/or (2) could stop printing paper copies and put the newsletter on the web site.

TO DO: State presidents should send their most recent newsletter to Judy ASAP.

Catherine King-Todd suggested state presidents find someone in each state to highlight for each newsletter. Zina Haywood (regional visitor) said MASFAA does their newsletters electronically, each MASFAA Executive Council member writes one article for the newsletter, and they use each state’s newsletter for articles. Suzy Allen (regional visitor) indicated their newsletter is on their web site and they do receive revenues from the vendors; EASFAA members can choose (via a question on the membership application) if they want an electronic copy of the newsletter or a paper copy. Zina Haywood (regional visitor) will be sending Kay Soltis information about how MASFAA does their vendor sponsorships. Essentially, the vendors contribute support and the different levels of support are recognized, rather than recognizing individual sponsorships. Darry Voigt (regional visitor) said RMASFAA has gone completely electronic with their newsletter and they have lost some readership. They use ads and also list sponsors by sponsorship level. They’ve discovered that some folks in their region do not pay their membership fee because they can go on line and read the newsletter for free. Zina Haywood suggested this could be solved by having to use a password.

TO DO: Each state president should arrange for Laura Whitelaw (next year’s Newsletter co-chair) to be added to their state's listserv.

Site selection
Jim White indicated the summer 2002 institute will be in Reno; it looks like the summer 2003 institute will be in Boise (tentatively, June 1-6, 2003). The schedule for the WASFAA conferences: 2003 Honolulu (Hilton Hawaiian Village), 2004 Scottsdale, Arizona (Double Tree Hotel); 2005 Portland (Double Tree Hotel, Lloyd Center). Jim presented options for 2006: Reno, Anaheim, Los Angeles, or Spokane. See written report.

Doug Severs suggested that the contracts be modified so that more meetings prior to the conference be held (for example, the Executive Council is meeting in Boise on Thursday and Friday, and our meeting contract did not begin until Saturday. The Boise Hotel is accommodating the revised schedule).

TO DO: Doug said that the Hawaii conference committee needs to ask now about finding extra space before the conference.

Barb Alm suggested that food costs be factored into the site evaluation. Even though food costs for 2006 are not available, current food costs are available and can give an idea of whether costs will be higher or lower than other sites when comparing the costs of holding a conference in the different cities.

MOTION: Doug moved that WASFAA consider hosting the WASFAA 2006 Conference in Reno. Laura Whitelaw seconded. Motion carried.

Noon: meeting adjourned for lunch.

1:00: Meeting re-convened.

MOTION: Laura Whitelaw moved to accept the November minutes as amended. Ken Jackson seconded. Motion carried.

Conference Committee
See Barb Alm’s written report. There are two concerns:

Attendance, although Kay Soltis indicated that the Boise pre-registration figures compare closely to the Seattle conference’s numbers at the same time (in Seattle, 534 attended). Boise has budgeted for 500 attendees;
The number of NASFAA visitors that are choosing to come to our region (the concern is about the WASFAA budget, which must accommodate lodging and registration for these folks). Addalou Davis indicated she was going to take this second issue to the NASFAA regional president's meeting for discussion and resolution.

TO DO: EC – e-mail Brenda Reeser (reeserb@byui.edu) if you are coming to the pre-conference dessert reception.

TO DO: Conference chairs: contact your committee members to let them know they should plan on coming to the Newcomer’s, EDAC Scholarship, and Committee Members Reception Sunday morning, April 7, at 9 a.m.

Fund Development
Kay Soltis indicated the sponsor brochure was sent in early February. 275 copies were mailed. For the first time, they have combined all sponsorship opportunities into one brochure. She has been receiving questions from vendors who had not received the brochure; she had attempted to alleviate this by sending Boise postcards to vendors last November asking for updated contact/address information. Only 3 vendors responded. At the last Executive Council meeting in Salishan, the Executive Council had authorized a maximum of $1,400 per space at the Boise conference. After further discussion (after seeing what happened in California when they raised their space costs), Kay and Addalou Davis determined that the maximum to be charged would be $1,350 (last year it was $1,250). On March 11, the drayage contract will be going out to vendors (for the Boise conference).

Kay indicated that Sun Ow had told her that vendor space in Hawaii might be a problem. She will be working on that issue with the conference committee (later during the meeting Kay indicated she had looked at the vendor space and indeed it is too small. Some suggestions were to expand the space and use another ballroom or to eat in the hall area and use the eating space for vendors).

Segmental Representative-at-Large
Jacquie Brathwaite distributed (e-mailed) the wording for the postcard project to the state presidents. The postcard is for students to use to thank their congressional representatives for their support of financial aid programs. She indicated her school (Boise State University) will be working with their student governing group to help with this project. Jacquie indicated the postcard is on the WASFAA web site.

Discussion was held about the gift WASFAA is expected to provide to the NASFAA Board when they attend their NASFAA meeting in Monterey in May.

MOTION: Doug Severs moved that the state presidents provide 10 pins from their state to be presented to the NASFAA group, with each pin not costing more than $5 each. WASFAA will reimburse the states. As part of the NASFAA gift, WASFAA will also offer one complimentary registration to the NASFAA Best Practices Symposium in Boise to a WASFAA member who is attending the Boise 2002 Conference. David Allen seconded. The motion passed, with one abstention.

TO DO: The Boise Conference Committee was asked to coordinate this project.

Ethnic Diversity Action Committee (EDAC)
Jannine Oyama reported that they had their EDAC in-person meeting at CASFAA and they also presented a WASFAA interest session that about 35 folks attended. On Wednesday they will be selecting 3 or 4 scholarship recipients to attend the Boise conference.

Barb Alm asked that EDAC consider holding their yearly meeting at the different states (and not always in California) so that the other states could receive the benefit of having interest sessions presented by the whole EDAC committee. Costs may prevent this from happening, but a request was made to explore costs to see if meeting outside of California was as cost effective as meeting in California.

Summer Institute
Addalou Davis presented Leonard Walker’s written report. The institute will be June 2-7 in Reno. They are budgeting for 125 attendees.

TO DO: State presidents e-mail Leonard Walker the names of any state scholarship winners going to the summer institute. Be sure to have the scholarship winners register themselves.

Graduate/Professional Issues Committee: See written report.

Management and Leadership Institute
See Don Black's written report. Addalou Davis indicated the presenters did a wonderful job. Deans and faculty were brought in to give management perspectives. Nine people attended; 4 were on scholarships (Arizona offered 2 scholarships; EDAC offered 1; California offered 1). Even with the attendance being lower than what was hoped, it was cheaper to continue than to cancel.

State reports

Washington: See Wendy Olson’s written report.

Nevada: See Laura Whitelaw’s written report.

Pacific Islands: See Frances Dinnan’s written report.

Arizona: No written report. Some highlights from Kim Naig's report: their spring conference will be in Tucson; Casino theme and will be going to a Diamondbacks game; expecting over 150. Their fall Sedona conference had over 180. College Goal Sunday was successful but have no numbers as of yet.

California: No written report (Linda Bisesi sitting in for Connie Barton). Some highlights from Linda’s report: the one big issue facing California is the state budget cuts. CASFAA has started a new mentoring program, matching newcomers with seasoned people. They also had a huge project: College Goal Sunday, where they had over 600 volunteers help students fill out FAFSAs at the different high schools throughout the state. Apple computers were set up to do FAFSAs on line. AT &T set up phone lines.

Alaska: See Barbara Burnett’s written report.

Oregon: No report (no one representing the Oregon association was at the meeting).

Idaho: No written report. Some highlights from Ken Jackson’s report: IASFAA has offered an ethnic diversity scholarship for a person from Arizona to attend the Boise conference. The fall IASFAA conference will be in Sun Valley October 14-16. Looking to link the IASFAA web site to WASFAA’s web site. Started newsletter again.

TO DO: State presidents should get dates of state activities to Dave Allen for the WASFAA calendar, to prevent scheduling conflicts.

Barb Alm asked each state president about the budget cuts they are facing to see if we could get a hint of how it is going to affect the attendance in Hawaii. All states are facing budget shortfalls; the consensus was that Hawaii attendance will be affected.

President-elect
Catherine King-Tood indicated she attended a NASFAA meeting in Rhode Island in November (along with Doug Severs and Addalou Davis). She went to SWASFAA (Tulsa, Oklahoma) for their conference as part of the inter-regional visitation process. She has received names of about a dozen volunteers. Committees are almost lined up. During the transition meeting to be held Saturday afternoon, April 6, in Boise, she is arranging for the outgoing Executive Council and committee chairs to meet for about an hour with incoming folks. Then the incoming folks will continue to meet the rest of the afternoon.

TO DO: Final committee, state presidents', and EC officials' reports due to Addalou by March 25.

Past President
Doug Severs indicated he will be on the summer institute faculty. He has been on the Executive Council for 7 years.

We went through the To Do list from the Salishan meeting. Discussion was held re: whether we wanted state flags at our conference (whether it would be too hard to keep track of the flags; whether we wanted to spend our funds on purchasing the small flags). No decision was made.

TO DO: Each state president should type up a report for the transition (see new To Do List for details).

The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 5, 2002

The meeting was reconvened at 9:00 a.m.

Addalou Davis thanked Jerry Sims and the Fiscal Committee for all of their hard work.

Fiscal Committee
Youlanda Copeland-Morgan presented a revised version of the fiscal portion of the Policies and Procedures Manual and briefly explained the suggested changes.

TO DO: Each Executive Council member is to read through the information and should provide information to the full EC about changes/reactions, by posting an e-mail response to the WASFAA EC. Must be done by March 15.

TO DO: Once Youlanda compiles the responses, she will forward to the Fiscal Planning Committee. Then, the changes will be sent to Jerry. Jerry will then forward to Peter Miller to put on the web. Addalou will present the updated version to the next Executive Council.

Dept of Ed Update
Marianna Deeken indicated that late spring training (through July) will be Tools for Insuring Program Integrity (COD, SFA tools, CPS edits and rejects, verifying data, and electronic processing). Another training series will be offered in August/September and again in October/November. Topics include Direct Loan reconciliation, FISAP, and Perkins due diligence. Other training by FSA will be offered late fall and winter; that topic is delivery systems. The financial aid training offered to new aid administrators finished last week in California; they are looking for a site next year (are thinking about Oregon or Washington). They have had a name change; they are now known as the Office of Federal Student Aid, rather than Student Financial Aid.

Regional visitors
Each of the regional visitors talked briefly about their region and also about the strengths they had observed as a result of their visit to our WASFAA meeting.

Further discussion occurred re: the gift we are giving to the NASFAA guests at the Monterey meeting.

MOTION: Jannine Oyama moved to amend yesterday’s motion to indicate that one free registration will be offered to a WASFAA member to attend the Best Practices Symposium in Boise and to replace the state pins with shell bead necklaces from Hawaii. Barbara Burnett seconded. Motion passed.

Policies and Procedures
Jerry Sims went through suggested changes in the Policies and Procedures Manual. He had assembled 7 versions of the Policies and Procedures Manual that were being used and combined all into one. Once it gets updated, it will then go on the web site so that only one version exists. The Executive Council members had been asked to read Jerry’s version of the Policies and Procedures Manual before the Hawaii meeting; members offered suggestions that fell into two categories: (1) basic editing/typo changes, and (2) philosophical issues. Because of time constraints, we ended up making just the basic editing changes and referred the philosophical issues to Catherine’s Executive Council (Catherine kept track of those issues).

MOTION: Kim Naig moved that approval be given to forward the changes to Jerry and use the updated version as a beginning document for WASFAA’s Policies and Procedures Manual. Doug Severs seconded. Motion passed.

MOTION: Steve Herndon moved to adjourn the WASFAA Executive Council Meeting and to move into an Executive Session (so that award recipients could be selected). Kim Naig seconded. Motion passed.

The voting members of the WASFAA Executive Committee then met in an Executive Session and adjourned at 4:45 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Barb Alm, Acting Secretary

TO DO LIST:

MOTIONS - Honolulu, Hawaii Executive Council Meeting, March 4-5, 2002

MOTION: Doug Severs moved that the Treasurer’s Report be approved. Catherine King-Todd seconded. Motion carried.

MOTION: David Allen moved that the ballots be destroyed. Jacqueline Brathwaite seconded. Motion carried.

MOTION: Doug moved that WASFAA consider hosting the WASFAA 2006 Conference in Reno. Laura Whitelaw seconded. Motion carried.

MOTION: Laura Whitelaw moved to accept the November minutes as amended. Ken Jackson seconded. Motion carried.

MOTION: Steve Herndon moved to adjourn the WASFAA Executive Council Meeting and to move into an Executive Session (so that award recipients could be selected). Kim Naig seconded. Motion passed.

return to section index