Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, commonly referred to as FIDM, is located on four campuses throughout California. With over 30 accredited Master’s, Bachelor’s and Associate Programs in design and creative business, they knew they had a creatively savvy group but wanted to find a way to help them be money savvy, too. During their search for a financial education platform, they needed an outside-of the-box approach.

“The students really learn from Financial Avenue,” says Martha Ramos, FIDM’s Stafford Repayment Coordinator. “The content isn’t easy, but it’s easy to learn. It’s written in a way that they can understand it.” Ramos also says she appreciates that courses are designed with testing immediately following each module so what they’ve learned is fresh in students’ minds.

A week before financial clearance, students are required to turn in their Financial Avenue grades. Without it, they cannot register for upcoming classes.

Continued use of Financial Avenue is part of FIDM’s strategy to maintain their low CDR, if not continue to decrease it, especially if the program is expanded to all students.

Financial Avenue helps students think twice about what they’re doing when it comes to money, Ramos says. And having financial skills will help them consider how their actions today are going to affect them tomorrow.

Ramos says, “I had a student who was asking me something about credit cards, something she learned in the course skills. The course taught her the importance of reading her statements, something she’s going to work on to understand better.”

By the end of the program, students who previously doubted the necessity of the courses are converted to financial education believers.

To learn more about Financial Avenue, contact your Business Development representative.

The University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK) is home to The Thompson Scholars Learning Community Program (TSLC) – a grant-based scholarship awarded to low and middle income students. The mission of the private scholarship is to develop these bright minds, from a holistic perspective, to be engaged citizens upon graduation; thus they focus heavily on academic, civic, and social development.

Serving students in their first and second years, The University of Nebraska at Kearney felt the TSLC program was missing a component that would round out their success equation. While they found ways to engage first-year students, they were concerned their second-year students were being lost in the shuffle. Upon reviewing their goals, they heard about Inceptia’s financial education solution, Financial Avenue.

After further exploring Financial Avenue’s learning objectives, Jennifer Harvey, program director, knew it was the right fit for her students. Financial Avenue’s focus on connecting personal finances with academic performance and career preparation would tie in perfectly to their second-year track, while also serving as an added retention element for students who may be feeling the financial pinch of attending college.

Upon review, the TSLC staff identified three courses that best suited their second-year objectives: Psychology of Money, Foundations of Money, and Earning Money. In addition, being a grant-based program, data mattered! Knowing that Financial Avenue provided real-time data on pre and post-course knowledge gain, the efficacy of the program could easily be captured for reporting purposes.

“Financial Avenue was a good fit for us because it was easy to integrate into what we were doing. For our students, it wasn’t a huge time commitment, but it’s something we’re continuing to have conversations with students about long after they complete the courses,” said Harvey.

The second-year TSLC students were required to complete all three Financial Avenue courses by the end of the fall semester. UNK’s requirement was initially met with reluctance from students who were quick to warm to the program once they realized its benefits. “My first reaction was ugh, another course I have to take,” laughs a TSLC student. “But after I went through all the courses, it was interesting.”

A fellow classmate, made changes to his financial habits that were evident even to his family. “My mom noticed that I bought a calendar and wrote down when bills were due and how much I could spend. It’s probably the most accomplished thing I’ve done with money.”

UNK’s selection of the three required courses has much to do with this positive student feedback. The Psychology of Money course, the one cited most often by the students, was chosen specifically for its exploration of the mental processes that go into financial decision-making and how users can retrain their brains for more desirable outcomes. That set the foundation for the additional courses, with a focus on banking, saving, setting goals, preparing for a career, and professional income.

Since 2015, 532 Thompson Scholars have completed close to 1,600 courses with an average knowledge gain increase of 35 percent across all courses. Serving as a vital piece of data, these numbers helped confirm with statistical significance that Financial Avenue is effective. “We’ve got something we can report on from an assessment perspective, which is huge in student affairs, where we’re looking for ways that we can make intentional deliverables to students with good outcomes,” says Harvey.

“I’m anticipating now that we’ve built our second-year program, students will have a sense that the building blocks we gave them really fit into making good long-term decisions. So financially, it may be, ‘I didn’t think about the career I was selecting and how finances would affect that. Maybe I need to be more thoughtful, not just about a major, but about a career and what lifestyle that will lead me to,’” adds Harvey.

“Working with Inceptia has been a really positive experience for us,” notes Harvey. “There was great customer support with the product, and it has been there since day one. That was helpful knowing it wasn’t going to put another burden on staff members – there was somebody else who could answer students’ questions. That made it an easy product to work with.”

To learn more about Financial Avenue, contact your Business Development representative.

How can schools effectively use financial education to engage students? What best practices are being used around the country to “think outside the box”? How can I use Financial Avenue to improve my students’ financial capability? Read on to see how the University of Dayton has linked Financial Avenue to a valuable commodity amongst students: campus housing.

Approximately 90 percent of undergrads live on campus. Campus living is required for the first two years, yet many upperclassmen choose to stay, vying for a space in “the neighborhood” — an area adjacent to campus with university-owned housing that includes houses and apartments.

An innovative program gives preference to students who earn PATH points by participating in campus engagement opportunities.

Short for Points Accumulated Towards Housing, the points give students who participate an advantage in the housing assignment process, says Beth Combs, Assistant Director of Flyer Student Services.

The more points you get, the better the selection of housing.

The school decided to add Financial Avenue to the program as a way for students — freshmen through seniors — to earn points and also learn some important life skills.

Students earn one PATH point for each course completed, with the potential to earn 10 points if they complete all of the courses. The flexibility of stand-alone courses within Financial Avenue gives participants the option to complete any number of the 10 courses in any order they choose.

Since the majority of students are completing all available courses, UD regularly resets the program for all registered users to allow them to take the course again.

Says Combs, “We allow students to participate in Financial Avenue each year because we recognize that repeating information and practicing to retain in long-term memory is necessary. By completing the modules every year as they are experiencing new things and gaining confidence, they are able to see the information from a new perspective, which contributes to their learning and development.”

UD’s Flyers Finances program takes a holistic approach to providing financial education intervention through multiple channels, at various times that will impact student decision making.

By partnering with Inceptia, they have found the tools they need to round out and strengthen their own programming through these offerings:

• Financial Avenue offers general information covering a variety of personal finance topics
• Loan Summary bridges the gap between entrance and exit counseling to help students better understand the connection between current borrowing and future outcomes
• Grace Counseling Outreach assists students during the critical grace period, educating them on repayment options and management
• One-on-one financial education meetings with counselors to review budgeting, credit, and student loans

To learn more about Financial Avenue, contact your Business Development representative.

The University of Texas at Tyler is one of the fastest growing in the University of Texas System with over 10,000 students enrolled. Maintaining an average student to professor ratio of 19:1 in their six colleges with four locations, they offer a student-centric learning environment that gives them an advantage over larger, less intimate campuses, aided by their offering of more than 80 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs.

Dr. Scott Lapinski, Director of Financial Aid, knew his team had a big challenge ahead of them with increasing enrollment numbers, multiple campuses and a lean staff. These factors would culminate in the perfect storm, leading to an increase in verifications to process and a potential roadblock to student matriculation.

“We all know verification processing is timely and can be the difference between a student attending school and just not making it. For the students and families, it can be overwhelmingly stressful. As a campus, our goal is to provide personalized service to all our students,” said Lapinski. “We needed to find a solution to manage the verifications and maintain the high level of service provided throughout the campus, including the Financial Aid Office.”

The University of Texas at Tyler’s Financial Aid and Scholarships Office discovered just such a solution with Verification Gateway from Inceptia. Verification Gateway is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. Offering interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, complete reporting and personal interaction when needed, Verification Gateway enables schools to process and package aid faster.

Since verification was found to be the most time-consuming work for the UT Tyler staff, the partnership with Inceptia allowed them to concentrate on assisting new and continuing students with other critical aspects of financial aid, knowing that the verification process was in good hands. The end result is more one-on-one time with students and better customer service, all while verifications are processed quickly and professionally.

Verification Gateway proved to be an even greater value-add the following year, when the UT Tyler staff unexpectedly experienced unusually high turnover and the reassignment of several seasoned staff members to Assistant Director positions. Having a rural location made it difficult to find experienced counselors, and so their three new hires (almost half of the total office staff) came on board with no financial aid training. Verification Gateway provided much-needed relief for the overwhelmed office, allowing them to fully train the new staff while continuing to focus on their high standards of excellence in serving students.

“Without already having a partnership with Inceptia, there could have been a dramatic change in the way we were able to assist students,” says Lapinski.

UT Tyler initially implemented Verification Gateway for the 2017-18 school year. The partnership resulted in 1,537 completed verifications in that first year, which sped up their awarding process and helped them meet their enrollment goals while enabling them to also dedicate the time they needed to in-person visits.

That high quality of service and commitment to students and parents is also shared by Inceptia, assuring UT Tyler had chosen the right partner to maintain the same level of service we had previously provided by processing in-house. Our level of service in the Financial Aid Office is parallel to our overall campus studentcentric learning environment, said Lapinski.

“We wanted to be sure our partnership would be an extension of our overall student service culture. Inceptia not only provided that, but we wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the increase in verifications in our past two aid years without them.”

To learn more about Verification Gateway, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.

Stephens College is the second oldest women’s college in the country and home to less than 500 students. Women are challenged by a variety of coursework, gain leadership opportunities, and receive career preparatory classes all while enjoying the competitive advantage of a 10-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio. Stephens is also known for its diverse and competitive degree programs: a successful physician assistant program, a nationally recognized fashion school, and top 10 theater program.

Alex Miller, Director of Financial Aid at Stephens College, learned of the staff’s difficult time keeping up with verifications after she came on board to Stephens.

“Verification was becoming stressful not only for students and families but also for staff,” Miller said. “With what seems to be more selections each year,” it was becoming difficult and strenuous for our office to keep up with incoming verification selections. In turn, this delayed students in getting their aid packages and finalizing their plans for paying for college.”

Miller said the financial aid staff at that time needed to come up with a solution to solve its verification problem. Solutions included hiring another staff member to manage verifications, re-disburse duties among the current staff, or outsource.

“Once the team knew outsourcing was an option, it became the preferred alternative,” Miller said.

The former financial aid director at Stephens learned of Verification Gateway (VG) at a conference. Verification Gateway from Inceptia is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. Offering interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, complete reporting and personal interaction when needed, VG enables schools to process and package aid faster.

“The previous director met with an Inceptia representative at the conference and was very excited about the quality of the service offered and how they presented their product,” Miller said. VG was implemented at Stephens in 2017.

Rather than submitting forms and returning them to the financial aid office, students completed verifications simply through VG’s online portal. In addition, students and families also received communication directly from Inceptia to ensure verifications were being processed efficiently; this allowed Stephens to be removed as the middle-man and eliminate any possible miscommunication.

“Inceptia provided branded marketing communication to our students and families that showed a partnership,” Miller said. “This gained trust among our students as they understood we had a third-party solution for verifications. In this field, communicating regularly and timely can be difficult to track and hard to do sometimes. Inceptia did a great job of making sure they reached out to students regularly.”

After implementing VG, Stephens reaped many benefits. The solution made the verification process more efficient; eased the staff work load; allowed students to complete verifications utilizing a user-friendly online portal; provided communication on behalf of Stephens; and gave outstanding customer service to Stephens staff during and after implementation. All of this, Miller said, was worth the investment.

“Hiring Inceptia provided piece-of-mind,” Miller said. “While there is a cost associated with it, Inceptia had our back and completed the verification process timelier.”

To learn more about Verification Gateway, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.