Online Training From USA Funds Gets New Aid Administrator ‘Up to Speed’

Editor’s Note: The following is a feature from the USA Funds^® 2006 annual report. USA Funds Education Access Report is highlighting the students, financial-aid administrators and education-lending professional featured in the annual report to highlight the ways in which USA Funds is a trusted partner in changing times. To access the full report online, you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

USA Funds’ online-learning opportunities paved the way for Jennifer Hill of Washburn University to go from financial-aid novice to knowledgeable student-aid professional.

When she became assistant director of financial aid at the Topeka, Kan., school in November 2005, Hill brought a background rich in higher-education-administration experience. She had not worked in financial aid before, however, and needed to get up to speed on the basics.

Hill’s director suggested online training offered through USA Funds University.

“It was nice to know that there were training opportunities, especially training opportunities that were available when I needed them,” Hill says.

She began by taking part in a USA Funds webcast that provided her with a broad overview of many of the areas for which she would be responsible in her new job. Hill also took advantage of online training about topics ranging from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to education-loan regulations.

“If not for the training, I would not have been able to get up to speed as fast as I did,” she says.

And getting up to speed quickly was important for Hill, who joined the financial-aid office just before spring disbursements of financial aid began. She had little time for off-site training. Additionally, the Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005, which became law in 2006, changed many federal financial-aid rules and regulations.

“I needed to learn the specifics of what we do here and this office’s processes,” Hill says, “but I also needed to know the broad picture of financial aid. With the online training, I was able to do both simultaneously.”

Hill later came back to the webcasts and online-learning courses for refreshers, including a recent session about veterans’ benefits.

USA Funds University offers more than 50 online-learning courses, including 28 introduced in 2006. Staff members of nearly 260 schools and 11 education lenders took advantage of the courses that year. More than 80 percent of those taking the courses demonstrated gains in knowledge after completing the course material.

In all, USA Funds University served more than 25,300 participants in 2006. Services range from USA Funds Financial-Aid Workshops, which provide the latest information to help financial-aid professionals administer federal student loans and other aid programs, to the USA Funds University Speaker’s Bureau, which offers industry experts to speak about financial-aid issues at meetings and conferences.

Online-learning courses for lenders debuted in 2006, adding to the USA Funds training opportunities that alert lenders to the latest developments in the ever-changing education-finance marketplace.