Education ​/ Teaching

Assistant Director of Financial Aid

Reporting to the Director of Financial Aid, the Assistant Director of Financial Aid is responsible for the administration and reconciliation of multiple financial aid programs and must adhere to the applicable federal, state, and college regulations and practices to perform essential processing. These responsibilities will necessitate the use of various software and web-based applications specific to financial aid operations.

The Assistant Director is responsible for managing part-time aid staff and providing additional mentorship and guidance to full-time financial aid staff. The Assistant Director serves as the primary back up to the Director of Financial Aid.

The Assistant Director will have responsibility to review student financial aid applications/records, including verification. Additionally, they will be responsible for oversight of Veteran's education benefits. The Assistant Director will be held accountable for compliance with all federal and state regulations related to financial aid, veteran's educational benefits, and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. This role is responsible for maintaining Satisfactory Academic Progress records and performing audits of student enrolled hours for applicability towards approved programs of study.

The Assistant Director is accountable for exchanging data between the U.S Department of Education and PowerFAIDS on a continuous basis via EDConnect, the federal interface system. This position requires an exceptional degree of regulatory and statutory knowledge in the areas of needs analysis, verification, and financial aid packaging as well as the ability to exercise critical thinking and decision making within the framework of Professional Judgment Standards.

Due to the need for interaction with students, employees, and college community, this position requires in-person presence but is eligible for telework: positions with back-up duties require consistent on-site presence; telework may be available to certain roles on a limited basis to best meet the needs of the department.

• Provide leadership and management for the part-time financial aid staff to include hiring, supervision, and oversight of the front desk coverage.
• Provide guidance and mentorship to full-time financial aid staff.
• Manage and maintain record of all WFP approved programs with bi-annual review of all programs to ensure hour and length requirements continue to be met.
• In collaboration with the Director, establish, lead and coordinate, WFP program approval submission process and CEWD procedural requirements, to include attendance and disbursement rules.
• Counsel parents and students regarding availability of financial aid funding, eligibility requirements and the application process, to include escalated concerns.
• Conduct workshops on completing the financial aid application for prospective, new, and enrolled students on a regularly scheduled rotation.
• Review student financial aid applications and perform federal verification on selected records, resolve conflicting information and C coded records.
• Evaluate special circumstance requests and make a relatively assured determination that changing and reprocessing financial (FAFSA) data to the federal processor is within program statute.
• Download student financial aid applications imported from the DOE into the financial aid administrative software.
• Create electronic origination and payment documents for all eligible Pell Grant and Direct Loan recipients and transmit them to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) via Common Origination and Disbursement (COD), the Department's payment interface used to project and monitor federal cash flow to the institution.
• Communicate with COD and the Central Processing System (CPS) regarding problems with processing, FAFSA downloads or federal program transmissions.
• Perform and manage an in-depth review of all new Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) files to identify necessary documentation and sources of conflicting information.
• Manage end-of-term Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) calculations to update student records; perform…