MSA to partner with Office of Student Financial Aid
MSA's goal is to help students navigate the financial aid process.
Published Oct. 20, 2009
The Missouri Students Association will begin looking into student financial aid issues after a meeting last Thursday with Financial Aid Director Jim Brooks.
MSA Senate Speaker Amanda Shelton and Senate Clerk Lakeisha Williams set up the meeting with Brooks after Williams brought a problem she was having with one her scholarships to Shelton's attention.
"I'm working on graduating early, so I wanted to you use my Brooks Scholarship during the summer in order to do so," Williams said. "The financial aid department told me no, but Academic Retention Services told me otherwise."
Other students have experienced problems regarding the application of their scholarships at MU. Whether this is a result of internal problems in the financial aid office or the scholarships themselves is unclear.
Freshman Nona Jenkins experienced problems with the distribution of some of her scholarships at the beginning of the semester. Jenkins approached the financial aid office with her concerns.
"They just told me to call my scholarship and ask them when they were going to send the money," Jenkins said. "They couldn't help because they didn't know when the scholarship was being sent. They weren't really helpful at all, because they had no control over my outside scholarship."
Shelton said the point of Thursday's meeting was to establish a closer working relationship with the financial aid office in order to make the first step in the exploratory phase of financial aid projects.
"We now have several more offices and individuals to contact to follow up on the more immediate issues and also some planning to do for state legislature lobbying efforts in the spring," Shelton said.
Among a number of specific programs and scholarships brought up in the meeting, including the Bright Flight scholarship, Pell Grant levels and Access Missouri, the general topic of the overall financial aid situation in the economy was discussed.
"We talked about the Bright Flight Scholarship, federal funding and various other topics," Williams said. "It was basically an informational meeting for us, MSA, to better understand how the financial aid system works. From here were working on how we can tackle some issues we discussed at a student level."
Shelton said MU has seen a 16 percent increase in the number of students filing FAFSA, work study requests are up and the total number of financial aid appeals for special circumstances from the beginning of the semester through Oct. 1 is greater than all of last year's requests combined.
Student Communications Director Tim Noce, who is running unopposed for MSA president, said his dialogue between MSA and the financial aid office will be beneficial to achieving some of his goals.
"That ties in a really well with the part of our platform regarding fiscal responsibility," Noce said. "I'm paying for the majority of school through working, student loans and scholarships. I lost $4,000 this year because I didn't get a grant that I have in the past and I'm not sure why."
Williams said though there is nothing concrete as of yet, these issues are ones she, Shelton and the MSA Multicultural Issues Committee will tackle in the near future.
"A lot of students don't know what to do as far as financial aid issues go,” Williams said. “The goal is to help students and provide comprehensive financial support.”
On Friday, Shelton and Operations Committee member Sami Ware will have the chance to represent MU at a roundtable discussion regarding these issues with Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and representatives from all other UM system schools.