“It’s about customer service":UVAFinance unit pitches in to help Student Financial Services during the back to school rush

The start of every fall term is hectic in Student Financial Services (SFS), as new Hoos and their families arrive on Grounds with a multitude of questions about financial aid packages. Every year, just before and just after the start of classes, SFS receives thousands of questions from students and parents, in person, via email, and via phone.

For SFS, those two weeks are “all hands on deck.” Nobody takes a day off, nobody goes out to lunch, and everyone lends a hand on the phones. The pace is fast and the days are long as everyone strives to address student concerns accurately and quickly. SFS staffers admit it can be a challenging, even draining, time of the year.

This year, SFS got unexpected and very welcome help from UVAFinance’s new Administrative Services Group (ASG).

Made up of administrative professionals from all UVAFinance departments, ASG provides comprehensive and coordinated administrative services to all of UVAFinance. And they don’t wait for requests to come to them – they actively look for ways to help.

ASG member Mary Fields, who works in SFS, shared with her group that a “peak time” was coming for SFS, and her fellow team members were quick to offer their assistance.

“They volunteered out of thin air,” said Steve Kimata, Assistant Vice President, Student Financial Aid.

Kimata says that ASG leader Disha Venkatesan’s offer of the group’s help was most welcome, and they quickly found places for the ASG volunteers.

“We provide lunch for all of our staffers during our three busiest days,” Kimata said. “The ASG members coordinated the delivery, set up, and cleanup of lunch for our staff members. It was a simple task, but it made such a difference because we simply didn’t have a spare pair of hands to take care of it.”

Mariah Kier, who runs the front desk in Carruthers Hall, is a member of the ASG team. In her post at Carruthers Hall’s main entrance, Kier began to see an increase in student/parent traffic, some of whom were frustrated by the fact that they had to walk around the side of the building (not through it) to get to SFS. While she was already redirecting those visitors to the SFS entrance on the other side of the building, Kier felt there might be more she could do to help.

“One of Mariah’s suggestions, based on what she had been seeing, was to create new signage around Carruthers Hall to help students and parents find their way without the wrong turns,” Kimata explained.

Kier developed and posted the new signage, which had street-view pictures and a series of progressive steps to take posted along the way, and both she and SFS could tell an immediate difference in the ease with which students found the right office.

Not only that but also, Kimata armed Kier with some frequently asked questions and answers on some very basic topics that allowed her to be even more helpful and reassuring to Carruthers Hall visitors.

ASG volunteers also helped out in the SFS lobby.

Venkatesan was one of the volunteers who assisted students both in the lobby and outside the door to SFS.

“There in the lobby, we would have students come with confusion in their eyes, asking us questions, and we could direct them to where they needed to go,” she said, adding that she and fellow volunteers also helped students and parents who were standing in line to get into the SFS entrance. ASG volunteers guided students and parents who arrived after closing time know when to come back, answered simple questions and offered reassurance.

On one rainy afternoon, Venkatesan even ran back and forth under the SFS awning to alert students and parents waiting in the foyer of the arrival of their Uber ride.

A little unconventional? Yes. But as Venkatesan says, it’s all about customer service.

“We worked as a team and it wasn’t a burden to any one of us. This is a high-stress time for students and parents,” she said. “We were happy to be able to help them and soothe them a bit.”

ASG’s team effort had the same soothing effect their SFS colleagues.

“ASG’s help meant all of the SFS staff could stay in their workflow, and focus on answering student and parent questions about financial aid,” said Chris Doran, SFS Communications Manager.

Kimata agrees, adding, “It was great seeing new faces from all across UVAFinance units come down to help out.”

“They might think it wasn’t a big deal, but it made a big difference,” he said.

Why Hire a Work Study Student

Does your department need an extra hand or two? Maybe some help with filing or scanning, or someone to staff a front desk?

The Federal Work Study program could be the solution you need.

Federal Work Study (FWS) jobs allow students to earn needed aid through employment. A wide variety of jobs are made available to students via the Handshake platform offered through the Career Center, but more opportunities are always needed.

Benefits of hiring a work study student:

• The federal government pays 70% of their salary on a work study award, which is part of their financial aid package. Your department only pays 30%!
• You and your colleagues have an opportunity to mentor a student and provide them with practical work skills in addition to their education.
• The connections and relationships students develop with administration and faculty help them to be more successful in their transition into college, and then into the world of work.
• Using federal work study awards for the intended purpose (supplying students with great work opportunities and mentorship) means that UVA continues receiving those awards in the future.
• Your staff gets development opportunities: they learn more about teaching and training, and possibly, through the removal of some administrative burden, they might have more time for project work they haven’t had time to do.

Still need some convincing? Donna Lewis-Wagner, coordinator of the America Reads program in the Curry School of Education, supervises over 100 FWS students each year. The students work as reading and math tutors in Albemarle County and Charlottesville City public schools. For the five years she has led the program, she has deployed the students, who provide a vital service to the teachers and children in area public schools.

“I’ve had a number of students decide to become teachers because of their experience as tutors,” she said, adding that students learn professional skills working in the program that will translate to any career they choose.

“It’s a win-win situation,” she says.

“The department that needs help, whether that’s with professors on a research project or other tasks within the department, obviously benefits, and the students benefit, too – they make money that’s been awarded to them as part of their financial aid packages, and they learn to be consistent, to show up, and be professional.”

To get started utilizing FWS in your area, view the training session in the Integrated System called “Introduction to Federal Work Study – SIS.”

Student Financial Studies also offers a yearly training on FWS for those across Grounds who hire students, but if your office would like more information, please reach out to SFS for answers to your questions and perhaps even a custom training session.

Read more about Federal Work Study

Getting more from the data and helping students get access to UVA

Scott Miller’s priority is to make sure students who want to attend UVA get the most out of financial aid.

As Director of Financial Aid in Student Financial Services, Miller and his team work closely with new students, transfer students, and returning students all year round, walking them through the process of applying for financial aid, answering their questions, and providing needed information.

Miller knows that financial aid can be daunting for students and families, so he keeps very close track of where students are in the application process.

From Left:  Mike Holian, Wendy West, Scott Miller,
Johann Reinicke, and Xavier Wiltbank, showing
off the dashboard to their new tool.

“I track the status of financial aid applications so I can see how many we have waiting, and what we’re waiting on from them, so I know who we need to reach out to and how we can help,” Miller said.

Up until recently, this tracking was fairly arduous: done in excel spreadsheets, the process involved a lot of cutting and pasting and sorting and matching of data from different sources, some of which was updated only weekly. It was time and labor intensive, and not always current as could be desired, but something Miller and his team were willing to do in order to help students.


That was the process until Wendy West, Miller’s colleague in Student Financial Services, told Miller there were new ways of reporting at UVA that might make things faster and easier. Thus began a team effort involving Miller and internal SFS IT resources in tight coordination with Johann Reinicke, Distributed Reporting Lead within UBI.
Through his work with UBI, Reinicke had seen firsthand many schools and units “making do” with slower and outdated reporting methods prior to UBI implementation.

“People have always found ways to get the data they need to get processes to move along, but without the right tools, it’s not always easy to complete” he commented.

“We worked with SFS so they could use the enterprise platform within UBI as a tool to make their process more streamlined. We partnered with them to build on that platform and help them take it where they needed it to go,” he explained.

Miller, working with West, Xavier Wiltbank, Amy Nolasco, and Mike Holian of SFS, identified the data fields and functionality that would allow them to monitor their processes and workflow most efficiently.

Reinicke and his team were then able to work within the enterprise software that drives UBI to enable SFS to use the system to achieve their goals.

The resulting system, a pilot of sorts, allowed SFS to get a new and up to the minute perspective on where students of all kinds were within the process.

Miller says that now when the data reveals students having issues, he revisits the way SFS is communicating about that part of the process, or invites those students to an event where they can be individually helped. The system has also enhanced communication between SFS and Admissions as they work toward their shared goal of assisting students entering UVA.

“SFS took the first step in taking ownership of the process, and seeing how they could get more out of their data,” said Reinicke.

“These are state of the art tools we’re using – QlikView, QlikSense – we are behind the scenes making sure that the proper security measures are in place, as well as best practices for development, so that when SFS pulls up a data point, they can be sure it’s accurate, trustworthy data.”

For Miller and the SFS team, the insight they have allows for a greater opportunity to serve students.

“We can now see the hold ups for all student populations. We can slice and dice the data in a multitude of ways. All I have to do is go into the tool and hit ‘refresh,’ and I have the latest information on our students’ needs,” Miller said.


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Did you know?

UBI is more than a tool! Have a thorny data problem? Consulting services are available through Engage UBI.

Summer's end is just the beginning for Student Financial Services

August: it’s the end of summer, the last chance to get all the things on your summer ‘to do’ list checked off before school starts. For those of us in academia, it’s the beginning of a fresh new year, a new start.

For Student Financial Services, it’s the season of questions. Between now and August 25th, the office’s phone lines, email inboxes, and lobby will be buzzing with questions from students and parents – questions about financial aid, paying bills, and much more.

 As the SFS team wraps up its participation in 10 Summer Orientation Sessions, where they host a “Money Matters” talk attended mostly by parents, they’ll be ramping up their customer service coverage to make sure the multitude of student and parent concerns are properly and promptly addressed.

At the Money Matters sessions, SFS Communications Manager Chris Doran says the message to parents is simple: Our goal is the same as yours – we want your student to be successful at UVA.

Between now and the end of the first week of classes, that goal will guide ten full-time SFS staffers in the call center and at the front desk (plus numerous other SFS staffers who will pitch in) as they focus on direct customer service to new UVA students and their parents.

“It’s all hands on deck during this time,” Doran said.

Doran says SFS will answer many “frequently asked” student and parent questions in the next couple of weeks: how do I use my 529 college savings plan to pay? How do I use my Veteran’s Administration benefits to pay tuition? How do we incorporate outside scholarships? How does my student pay at laundry facilities? How do I charge items at the bookstore?

Many of the questions SFS staffers get won’t actually come under SFS’s purview, said Doran.

“Because we have the word ‘finance’ in our name, pretty much everything under the sun comes to us,” he said.

Fortunately, SFS staffers are willing and able to answer those questions as well, explaining questions about credit hours and tuition, and referring students to their academic offices as needed.

The days will be long and busy for SFS staffers during this time, but it’s all worth it.

Jenn Bari, who manages the SFS Contact Center, said, “We don’t mind answering the questions and helping students to understand their finances. We have the opportunity every day to impact students’ lives and to help them succeed.”

Valerie Clem joins Student Financial Services

Valerie Clem has joined Student Financial Services as Assistant Director of Athletic Financial Aid. Previously with Virginia Commonwealth University as an Athletics and Veterans Certification Coordinator, Clem has worked in financial aid for over ten years.

She has a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from VCU and a Master of Science in Higher Education Administration from Drexel University and is currently writing her dissertation for a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Nebraska. 

As a first generation college student herself, Clem says she enjoys helping families understand the financial aid process and helping students achieve their academic goals. An avid fan of professional wrestling, Clem has attended WrestleMania seven times.