Important Message

The EASFAA Executive Council believes Black Lives Matter. We stand in solidarity with the black community. EASFAA is committed to diversity and inclusion and we believe it is important for us to educate ourselves and others, especially during difficult times like this.

EASFAA has built a robust library of online training and in 2020-2021, we will continue to expand our footprint through education for the EASFAA community. The association will provide a series of educational opportunities including webinars and open forums for discussion throughout the coming year to inform and empower our community on Black Lives Matter activities and advocacy. If there are topics you are interested in learning about, please do let us know as we want to provide timely and relevant resources for our membership.

As financial aid administrators, we have often been the voice of positive impact toward socioeconomic justice for our students. It is clear that more needs to be done. While we recognize that we alone cannot bring about the change needed, let us pledge to continue to work through action and education towards the justice called for when we say Black Lives Matter.

Sincerely,
Jim Anderson, EASFAA President 2021/2022

Welcome to EASFAA

EASFAA Friends and Colleagues,

As we come off of one of the most difficult years for EASFAA in its 54 years of existence, we can all have hope for the coming year. After a year when we could not gather together in person, had to move two conferences to a virtual platform and clung together through Zoom, we now have the prospects of returning to normal, albeit a new normal.

There is no better time than now to redefine who we are as an organization and as a profession. What we found this past year is that we were up to the task in continuing to serve students at our institutions, despite the adversity. We did this through virtual meetings, in-person meetings but with masks and glass partitions, emails, online document collection and review, whatever worked to get the job done. We proved we could persevere under the most difficult circumstances. Now it is time to take what we have learned from this experience and to move forward.

No organization can be strong without an active membership. There are many EASFAA committees seeking new members for the coming year and I invite everyone to volunteer and get involved with the association. One new committee is the Sector Interests Committee. This committee will be creating subcommittees for each of our sectors (i.e., two-year public colleges, private colleges, etc.) where committee members will be able to bring forward issues of concern for advocacy, help develop webinar topics and conference sessions, and otherwise educate colleagues about the way financial aid business is conducted throughout higher education. This would be a great opportunity to get involved with EASFAA.

Ours is a truly noble profession and all of us should be proud of what we do. Let’s work together to support one another in our professional development and career advancement and in the process build lifelong friendships and hopefully have a little fun along the way.

I look forward to working with all of you in the coming year.

Jim Anderson
2021-2022 EASFAA President
Montclair State University