Business Meeting Minutes - 10/10/97

A motion was made to approve the minutes from last year, at WASFAA Spring 1997. The motion was approved unanimously, however there was no representation from UNLV.

The NAFAA Bi-laws state that active membership is $20, however there are no recorded dates as to when this change had been voted on since the previous minutes were not dated. Currently, everyone has been paying $15.

Discussion as to whether or not to increase the membership fee to $20 or leave it as is at the current $15 resulted in the decision to keep fees at $15 until the WASFAA conference (April 1998) at which time the topic will be revisited to continue discussion of ideas.

Discussion of an interest bearing account for our NAFAA funds resulted in Jim Hadwick making a motion to invest all remaining funds over $1000 into a 6 month CD after the conference expenses are all paid. Barbara seconded the motion. It was unanimously approved. The executive board will review this in late March to determine how to proceed.

A suggestion was made that Northern Nevada NAFAA members might want to run for the treasurer's position to maintain history since there has been no participation from the southern part of the state for the past couple of years.

Debbie Perkins will format an address list for current 1997-98 NAFAA membership and will post it to the website.

Jim presented a Treasurer's Report. The golf tournament was costly. Jim does not plan on having golf next year. The conference will be in the Southern part of the state next year. Jim will contact the bus company and request a refund within 30 days since the bus was inoperable and we commuted in private vehicles.

The SIS Users Group will meet to discuss the SIS information system with Informs the last week in October. Release 2.2.8 made fixes and changes to the Student Accounts module. Release 2.2.9 made changes to FISAP & Pell Payment Production. Release 2.2.8 had a problem with the NOTE screen and the NEWS screen abending.

Mona requested the WASFAA Executive Committee to lower the fees for the Alaska trip. The response is still pending.

The By-laws need to be revised. For example, the voting procedure needs to be clearly spelled out as to what groups may vote such as active members (schools) and the associate members (lenders). It is understood who constitutes active members, however the Bi-laws are not clear. Also, in the past the executive officers have been professionals. The Bi-laws are not clear as to whether officers must be professionals or can be classified staff. The Bi-laws need to be rewritten for clarity. Barbara Hall-Bellows and Paige Hurley volunteered to form a committee to accomplish this task. All members should read the Bi-laws and send comments via email to either Paige or Barb by February 1, 1998. The comments will be reviewed and voted on at WASFAA in April 1998.

The By-laws mention specific membership groups within the association which Mona would like to fill. Sign-up sheets were distributed for people to join the select committees. Please ask anyone who is willing to be part of the committees.

IDEAS

Mona presented the idea of training High School counselors as an association, not as individual institutions.
As our state operates on a biennium budget, we need to be thinking about how to get to our legislators to give input into the legislative sessions.
We discussed making nominations to the executive board to represent diverse groups. Currently, all the executive officers are from community colleges.
Next year the federal update training will be here in Reno.
Have a NAFAA table at the College Fair, perhaps a flyer of who we are and what we can do for you.
Someone suggested a NAFAA newsletter. A NAFAA newsletter would be a separate responsibility for anyone interested in doing such. Suggestion of 2 per year, one fall term & one spring term. An idea was suggested to cut and paste a newsletter to the NAFAA website.
Mona would like to coordinate the 1998 NAFAA conference with the Admissions Conference to have a ½ or 1 day interaction with the two groups.

The NAFAA webpage is on the TMCC website at www.tmcc.edu TMCC has made a committment to maintaining this webpage. The webpage will have a calendar of events, NAFAA conference info, and the membership directory. The history section of this webpage is under construction. We encourage feedback on the website.

PROPOSED TOPICS FOR THE WEBSITE

Reauthorization
Link to Mark Kantrowitz Financial Aid Information page
Link to all NAFAA school web pages
Link to Chronicle of Higher Ed
NAFAA business meeting minutes
Committee information reports
New membership forms
List of lenders who sponsored/supported NAFAA

We discussed whether or not we want to continue with a NAFAA scholarship. It was agreed upon to continue for the 1998-99 year with the same scholarship criteria established for 1997-98 and the same committee (Joan Williams, Tom Reed, Sandi Guidry and Laura Whitelaw).

There is leadership training for all state association presidents. Chemene Crawford, president-elect, requested NAFAA dollar support to attend this training via Mona as she was not able to attend the conference. Mona suggested she submit something in writing and the executive board would respond to her request.

Tom Reed encouraged college deans to part of federal update hear demands placed on f/a before go to legislature. Seems like we are an agent for the IRS, INS, Selective Service, Americorps and yet we get no additional support. The deans need to hear these federal updates to understand what new changes are coming.

A concern was expressed that the Regents Scholarship is not even a scholarship.

Jim Hadwick congratulated the TMCC student who won the NAFAA logo contest. The NAFAA mugs were great.

Mona concluded the meeting by thanking all the committee members and those who contributed to the conference.

dnp