Students who are at risk of maintaining Satisfactory Academic Progress under financial aid now have new requirements in the process.

Jerry Donna, the director of the Financial Aid Office, said financial-aid students who are at risk of losing their financial aid use a financial-aid appeal form where the student can appeal to the office for the re-instation of their aid.

This process, which normally involves a form that is turned in, now requires the student to meet with an adviser who can offer suggestions of what to do next to develop a strategy to meet Satisfactory Academic Progress.

“Eastern is a part of the Title IV program, which enables us to get funds from the federal government,” Donna said. “The federal government never really had academic advisers get involved before to help the students develop a plan, but now it’s part of the process.”

The process for getting this change instated included revising policies for the financial aid appeal process, Donna said.

“The government wants to move students more consistently toward completion,” Donna said. “Rather than paying students to go to school for 10 years, they’d rather they be done in four or five.”

Other requirements include a minimum 2.0 GPA and 67 percent attempted coursework completion.

“This is something that I think has been needed for years, but it was just never required,” Donna said.

He said the standards have been changed nationwide and are all, for the most part, relatively uniform.

Donna said Eastern’s financial-aid program gets about 60 percent of its funding through federal-aid programs, so making the change to stay in compliance with Title IV was important to the school financially.

“We’re running about $126 million through this office,” he said. “If we were to lose that Title IV eligibility, the students would lose a lot.”

One thing about the changes that proved to be different for the office was training the advisers to be there for the students in tough financial situations.

“Students will come in and go over the checklist of why they need to appeal with an adviser and then talk about why they have not met the guidelines for SAP,” Donna said.

The advisers will help the students figure out ways to get to 2.0 GPA or 67 percent completion, or both, depending on what is needed, Donna said.

Another addition for the advising sessions is the usage of online grade point average and completion-rate calculators, which will assist both the advisers and students in knowing exactly what is needed to reach their goal.

Four different training sessions have occurred for the new advisers, including sessions for the Student Success Center, TRiO, Student Support Services and Campus Advising Network.

Donna said department chairs and faculty were also present at the sessions.

“We don’t always get guidelines from the federal government that make sense, but this (addition) makes sense,” he said. “It helps people to connect with someone that can help them plan.”

Advisers now use a program called “rePORTAL” to quickly assess a student’s record and figure out the best way to help them.

“The work that has been involved to get this whole process changed including training advisers and changing our process internally was well worth the effort,” he said. “If even one student is helped by this process, isn’t it worth it?”

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].