COMMITTEE:   Student Scholarships, Fellowships, and Financial Aid Committee

 

MEETING DATE:    24 January 2011

 

PERSON PRESIDING:      Alice Feret; Prof. Feret called the meeting to order at 11:02 AM

 

REGULAR MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE:       Sarah Colby, Qun Lu, Jonathan Dembo

 

EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE:    John Fletcher, Cal Christian, Judy Wagner

 

OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE:        Lori Lee, Maurine Devine, Jeremy Jordan

 

ACTIONS OF MEETING

 

Agenda Item #1: Appointment of Secretary of the Day

 

Discussion:

 

Action Taken:  Jonathan Dembo asked to serve.

 

Assigned additional duties to:  Jonathan Dembo agreed to serve.

 

Agenda Item #2:  Approval of Minutes of November 22, 2010.  http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/fsonline/customcf/committee/ss/ssm1110.htm        Motion seconded & approved without amendments. Discussion:

 

Action Taken:

 

Assigned additional duties to:

 

Agenda Item #3:  Update on availability of all University scholarships listed online via the Enrollment Management Office.  

 

Discussion: John Fletcher, of the Enrollment Management Office, reported that the unified list of scholarships is to be available on a new website.  Enrollment Management will revise the site annually.  His office is also planning a new searchable database that will allow students to identify scholarships for which they are eligible.  However, the data for these sites is incomplete.  Fletcher expects the scholarships list to be available on the Financial Aid Office website by March 2011.

 

Action Taken:

 

Assigned additional duties to:

 

Agenda Item #4:  Continued discussion on University scholarships with Maureen Devine-Ahl including reporting process and Foundation requests. 

 

Discussion: Maureen Devine-Ahl, Director Donor Relations & Scholarships in the Office of University Development, reported the Foundation is working on a unified system for scholarship requests.  She will be presenting a report on the plan for the Deans and Directors meeting later this week.  She will ask each of the Deans and Directors to designate one person to be the point of contact on all their scholarship nominations to the Foundation.  This is in response to the State Auditor’s request made last year to unify ECU’s system to ensure fairness and financial transparency.  She expects that most of these points of contact will be Scholarship Committee Chairs within the various schools and colleges.   In order to make certain that the system is fair throughout the university, Scholarship Committee Chairs will be asked to fill out online reports describing the scholarships within their schools and colleges and the application and approval procedures, listing the names of committee members, the dates of their meetings, and how they rate the student applicants.  They are proposing that all Scholarship Committee Chairs report by 15 April.  During the discussion that followed, she agreed to consider revising the reporting deadline to 15 March so that students could be told whether they had received a scholarship before deciding whether to attend ECU or some other school.  Extended discussion followed.  Jeremy Jordan, of the Financial Aid Office, was particularly concerned with the submission deadlines and reminders.

 

Action Taken:

 

Assigned additional duties to:

 

Agenda Item #5:  Faculty Scholarship Overview Workshop Plans (Feb. 2011) 

 

Discussion:  The Committee discussed the title, date, and venue of the proposed workshop to be sponsored in February by the Committee.  Several Committee members could not attend a workshop on the Committee’s next scheduled meeting date (21 Feb.)

 

Action Taken: The Committee changed the title of the workshop they plan to sponsor next month to ECU Scholarship Awarding Workshop:  Or Everything You Wanted to Know About Scholarships in 1 Hour.  They agreed to invite all the Financial Aid Representatives and Scholarship Committee Chairs as well as the individuals in some schools who have responsibility for scholarship matters.  The Committee agreed to host the workshop in the Mendenhall Great Rooms, on 28 February, from 11:00 AM – 12 Noon.

 

Assigned additional duties to:

 

 

NEXT MEETING:    28 February 2011, 11:00 AM, Mendenhall Great Rooms

 

ITEMS TO BE DISCUSSED:  ECU Scholarship Awarding Workshop:  Or Everything You Wanted to Know About Scholarships in 1 Hour.