FAFSA season is underway. Carol Exum has seen many changes spanning 26 years of service in the Financial Aid Department, perhaps none bigger than a complete overhaul of the process last year, which brought along lots of glitches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year the application process has seen major improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe questions were cut from 103 to under 35. The Department of Education addressed many problems and has not had nearly as many problems as last year,\u201d Exum said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As anything else it is not 100% error free, which is the reason for student outreach such as the workshop held on March 6, and again on March 26 at the Jernigan Library Room 253.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the recurring challenges faced by the department is continuing students completing their application in a timely manner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are holding these workshops for students to get them done before they go home for Spring or Summer break, so they can relax,\u201d Exum said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A helpful feature of the workshops is that they are open to parents of students as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Spicak, a Mechanical Engineering student attended the workshop with his father and had their issue resolved after an online system was down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe process has been pretty simple,\u201d Spicak said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spicak\u2019s advice for incoming students is: \u201cIf you just go to the workshop and put in a few hours you\u2019re already done and don\u2019t have to worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luis Juarez, another advisor, understands the importance of student aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI would not be here if it wasn\u2019t for federal student aid. This impacted me and now I have this sense of duty to give back to future students,\u201d Juarez said. \u201cIn the blink of an eye it\u2019s going to be summer. We don\u2019t want to tell students this is going to be delayed. If we can start working on that as soon as possible we can get better results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Juarez said the best way to reach the office is by phone, but preferably coming into the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes over the phone questions are difficult to answer. When we show them the number it is not as abstract. We want to make sure they understand,\u201d Juarez explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond paper work, both Exum and Juarez showed great enthusiasm for helping students and making the process enjoyable and memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSee us face-to-face, see us smiling, hang out with us, get some popcorn. Know the faces behind the process and know that we\u2019re all here for each other,\u201d Exum said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next workshop will be held March 26. The of Office of Student Financial Aid is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday in the MSUB Room 132.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FAFSA season is underway. Carol Exum has seen many changes spanning 26 years of service in the Financial Aid Department, perhaps none bigger than a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":11372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[308],"class_list":["post-11368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"authors":[{"term_id":308,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"jakob-salinas","display_name":"Jakob Salinas","avatar_url":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/23494c9101089ad44ae88ce9d2f56aac.jpg?ver=1779191980","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11373,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11368\/revisions\/11373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11368"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}