President's Welcome

Dear MASFAA Colleagues:
Student financial aid administrators are facing another year of tremendous uncertainty: a fragile economy is bringing more families than usual to the aid office; state support for higher education is at an all time low; college operating budgets are constrained to ensure no dollar is spent unnecessarily; and the greatest number of federal regulations in history have just been enacted.

While it is easy to say that uncertainty and change in the financial aid office is the rule, the sheer number of new regulations is mind-boggling. Those of us who have been in the student financial aid profession for several decades know that aid offices will have to devote significant time to unraveling the new rules and figuring out how to alter systems, policies, and procedures to accommodate them. Anyone who thinks this will be easy has lost touch with reality!

My goal in writing is to urge you to consider the 2009 MASFAA Conference a must-attend event and to encourage you to plan for it in your budgeting process. If you need approval from a higher institutional authority, seek it now. The Conference Committee has been working very hard to ensure that this conference will provide both theory and practice regarding the new regulations, the rules for many of which will not be determined until shortly before the Conference. The conference will be held in Minneapolis on October 18 – 21, 2009. Hotel room rates are excellent and the registration fees are $295 for the full conference or $195 for one day!

The MASFAA conference is a great deal for financial aid professionals because it offers national quality presentations at state conference prices. In addition, the size of the MASFAA Conference is just big enough to ensure broad perspectives, but small enough to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to get their own questions answered.

I hope to see you in Minneapolis!

Sincerely,

Rick Shipman
2009 MASFAA President