Executive Council Meets In Coralville

(by Aaron Steffens, MASFAA President)

Happy 2015 everyone!  Members of the MASFAA Executive Council received a preview of this fall’s conference venue when they met at the Coralville Marriott for their January meeting this past week.  Your council members worked hard during this meeting with our deliberations lasting until after 6 pm on Thursday evening and about fifteen minutes past our ending time Friday afternoon.  While officers each shared their reports, we spent the majority of our time discussing topics including the MASFAA Moments blog, membership recruitment strategy, the offering of quarterly webinars, reworking of Donor Development forms on the website and proposing changes to when we publish yearly offerings to our donors.  The board also made several decisions related to the upcoming conference including the approval of a $365 registration fee, the likely offering of a pre-conference workshop and the development of a best practices document for conference presenters.  Board members were also reminded that they need to submit certain items to the MASFAA Archivist as outlined in our procedures.

The #mymasfaa Executive Council is meeting in Coralville, Iowa at the site of our fall conference. pic.twitter.com/KkI5Us9v37
— MASFAAweb.org (@MASFAAweb) January 23, 2015

With MASFAA elections just around the corner, board members were encouraged to submit nominations.  The board also moved to reduce the number of days that the actual election is open from 30 days down to 14.  A thirty-day election period was created at the time when voting was done via mailed paper ballot.  The board felt that 14 days was ample time to vote electronically and were inclined to believe that most will vote in the first couple of days.  The President-Elect is currently updating the Policy and Procedure manual to reflect this change as well as our change to electronic voting.   I encourage all of our members to nominate a colleague for a MASFAA office or to self-nominate.  The nomination form should be online in the next couple of weeks.

The MASFAA Executive Council was not the only MASFAA group in Coralville this past week.  The Conference Program and Local Arrangements Committees were also onsite to start building connections for a successful fall conference.  Each of MASFAA’s groups received a hotel tour and a preview of some of the surrounding attractions.  Conference attendees will be able to enjoy beautiful conference and hotel facilities as well as many offerings that are just steps away from the conference.  Mark your calendars now to join us October 4-7 in Coralville, Iowa! In a couple of days, you'll be given a virtual tour of the conference site on this blog, written by our site chairs, Jayne Dinse and Dick Battig! You won't want to miss it.

Our fall conference hotel: the Marriott in Coralville, Iowa

The next meeting of the MASFAA Executive Council will be held in conjunction with our annual Summer Institute and Leadership Symposium this June.  Officer and committee reports for January have been posted to the MASFAA website if you want to learn more about our activities.  Best wishes to each of you as a new financial aid season begins!