Assistant Director of Financial Aid, Client Services

Position Title: Assistant Director of Financial Aid, Client Services

About the University: Western Washington University, with over 15,000 students in seven colleges and the graduate school, is nationally recognized for its educational programs, students and faculty. The campus is located in Bellingham, Washington, a coastal community of 90,000 overlooking Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands and the North Cascades Mountain range. The city lies 90 miles north of Seattle and 60 miles south of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Western has additional sites in Anacortes, Bremerton, Everett, Port Angeles, and Poulsbo. Western is recognized nationally for its successes, such as being named one of the top public master's-granting institutions in the Pacific Northwest for 25 years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.

Western Washington University is committed to achieving excellence through advancing inclusive success, increasing our Washington impact, and focusing on transformational education grounded in the liberal arts and sciences and based on innovative scholarship, research, and creative activity. Western's greatest strength is the outstanding students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae who make up its community. Western supports an inclusive governance structure for all and provides a learning and working environment in which everyone can thrive.

In pursuit of this excellence, individual employees are expected to establish and maintain productive and effective inclusive working relationships amongst diverse populations including staff, faculty, administration, student, and external constituents. Further, individual employees are expected to have the ability to operationalize sustainability concepts (economic, societal, environmental) into all aspects of performing their job duties.

About the Department: The Financial Aid Department supports Western's mission, which states that together with our students, staff, and faculty, we are committed to making a positive impact in the state and the world with a shared focus on academic excellence and inclusive achievement. We strive to support our students with financial assistance through grants, scholarships, Work Study, and loan programs.

About the Position: The Assistant Director of Financial Aid, Client Services assists the Executive Director, Financial Aid in the operation of the Financial Aid Department. This position may serve as Acting Director of Financial Aid when the Executive Director is absent. Primary duties include chairing and providing strategic and ongoing leadership for the Financial Aid Counseling Team; supervising one Office Support Supervisor 2 and five Financial Aid Counselors;

providing administrative oversight for the Financial Aid Services Center; updating publications, forms and the departmental website; auditing Counselor file review and awarding; serving as a member of the administrative team; completing a portion of student file load; and other duties as assigned.

Position Duties and Responsibilities:

25% - Provides strategic leadership for the Financial Aid Counseling Team:

• Chairing weekly Counseling Team meetings among approximately 12 Counseling Team members to address regulatory guidance and interpretations, monitoring individual and team productivity on a weekly basis, strategizing better ways to communicate with, award and advise students, recommending file load changes through preparation of written rationale to the Executive Director, serving as a resource to handle unusual student cases, leading Counselors in the timely resolution of specific recurring tasks, including but not limited to addressing lagging workflows, tuition over-award and quarterly meal card shut-off reports.
• Responsible for file review procedure desk reference maintenance, policy guidance via One-Note maintenance, ensuring timely and consistent review of verification (student/parent FAFSA and WASFA audit) and other requirements of aid applications and attending materials.
• Addresses student and family issues that require higher-level responses, often in collaboration with the Executive Director.

25% - Supervisory:

• Supervises the following five positions: one Office Support Supervisor 2 and five Financial Aid Counselors.
• Sets goals for performance and deadlines in accordance with departmental plans and vision.
• Organizes workflow and ensures that employees understand their duties and delegated tasks.
• Monitors employee productivity; providing constructive feedback, coaching and performance evaluations.
• Responsible for developing and administrating training and onboarding program for new Counselors.

15% - Oversees Financial Aid Services Center (primary Financial Aid Lobby):

• Collaborates with direct reports and others to operationalize and adjust strategies as needed to successfully serve students, family members, University departments and others through the FASC (Financial Aid Services Center). Entails planning, organizing, staffing, leading, controlling and assessing all activities…