Financial Aid Training
What would be the best resource for Financial Aid Training?
May I suggest the FSA Conference in Late November, Early December each year? It's great to learn everything directly from the Feds.
Great Lakes provides free training webinars on their website. I have found them to be very resourceful during down time.
For training on Title IV, there is e-training available for free at www.http://fsatraining.info/ You simply need to register for a username.
There are also regional workshops made available from the office of the US Dept of Education.
For more information, go to https://eligcert.ed.gov/ and contact your regional office. You can also go to
https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/training/fundates.html
for FAQs and a list of dates and locations. Again the training is free, but you'll need to cover your own travel expenses.
The best training would come hands on from a seasoned financial aid officer. I find that the online trainings are great but the years of experience and situational knowledge is something that cannot be captured in a basic online training course.
I was a self taught financial aid officer who obtained some of my information by doing the fsa training that Mary posted in the above comment. I feel that the majority of my information came from actually going through the process of filling out a FAFSA (reading every section, helpful hint, exporing every piece of information), then completing the MPN and ELC (and reading every piece of information). The changes that have been made to the Entrance Loan Counseling are terrific! It is the best tool to come out of the DOE for encouraging students to be informed.
Make training fun....play a game of "verification" with new employees. The employee would have to go through the process of obtaining verification information for all 5 levels of verification (V1-V5). Of course printing out the 1000 page IFAP is also a start..but guidance must be provided by the director...otherwise you just scared off your new employee.
The conferences are good for already seasoned financial aid officers who need to stay up to date on any changes in regulation. I cannot see any benefit of sending a new officer to NAFSAA conference. They will be hounded by sales people (in the booths and lingering around the conference) and listen to topics that are beyond their scope of knowledge. Yes, they are good for networking, and for updates to current regs, but we are training, so I would not recommend a conference until the new employee knows what COD, NSLDS, CPS and all our other fun acronyms mean prior to them attending.
One last thing...utilize your staff. You are only as good as your employees....you hired them for a reason....they are smart! If you have specialists or people who seem to excel in specific areas...have the new employee sit with different subject matter experts. It will not only empower your current employees but it will assist in relationship building within the current team.
