The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) is committed to empowering students at every stage of their academic journey through access and support. With a focus on student-centered solutions, UNL prioritizes financial aid access as a cornerstone of enrollment management. Central to this mission is ensuring students complete the FAFSA, a critical step in securing financial support and advancing their educational opportunities.

 

Despite a solid outreach process, UNL faced significant challenges. Husker Hub, the university’s one-stop financial and enrollment services center, was handling a high volume of in-person and virtual traffic. With the team short by four full-time staff members and a rise in minimum wage for student workers, creating budget constraints, the university struggled to maintain consistent, impactful outreach.

 

“We’re always committed to doing what’s best for our students,” shared Justin Chase Brown, Director of Scholarships & Financial Aid. “But with staff shortages and the increasing demands on our Husker Hub, we simply didn’t have the capacity to reach every student.”

 

UNL needed an efficient and effective, goal-driven solution to address these limitations without overburdening its resources.

 

To meet these challenges, UNL partnered with Inceptia to implement the FAFSA Completion Outreach Program. This partnership allowed UNL to focus its efforts on specific groups of students while alleviating the workload on internal staff.

 

Using a multi-touchpoint approach, Inceptia engaged students through personalized communication, answered their questions, and encouraged FAFSA completion within a concentrated time frame.

 

“We started small with a pilot group of returning Pell-eligible students who hadn’t filed their FAFSA nor enrolled,” explained Justin. “The team at Inceptia helped us stay focused and ensured we reached students who needed it the most.” For the FAFSA Completion Outreach Program, UNL prioritized all new incoming students who had not yet filed a FAFSA and all enrolled returning students who were Pell-eligible the previous year who had not yet filed a FAFSA. This campaign was timed to begin shortly after the last day to add/drop courses (UNL census date) to boost FAFSA completion for enrolled students.

 

This structured, data-driven approach provided UNL the capacity to connect with students who might have otherwise been overlooked, delivering measurable results to demonstrate the program’s impact.

 

In just two weeks, the program began to demonstrate its value. Inceptia successfully contacted 683 students by phone, achieving an impressive 51% contact rate and a remarkable 75% email open rate. Upon completion of the outreach for the campaign, 10% of the prioritized students had already filed their FAFSA within the campaign period, with additional submissions anticipated.

 

The smaller pilot group of 116 returning Pell-eligible students yielded even stronger outcomes, which was 46 enrollments, highlighting the power of personalized outreach in driving student action.

 

“This program gave us the capacity and focus we needed,” Justin said. “It’s not just about numbers–it’s about ensuring every student gets the opportunity to succeed.”

 

UNL’s successful partnership with Inceptia underscores the value of collaboration and outsourcing in higher education. By leveraging a service partnership with external expertise, UNL achieved measurable results without overburdening its budget or internal resources.

 

Brown encourages other institutions to explore similar strategies: “Don’t hesitate to use every tool at your disposal. Grants, partnerships, and outsourcing can make a world of difference in ensuring students get the support they need without overloading your team.”

 

Looking ahead, UNL plans to expand these efforts, demonstrating that targeted outreach programs not only support individual students but also drive institutional success.

   

To learn more about how Student Outreach Programs can engage your students and boost enrollment, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.

 

 

St. Thomas Aquinas College is in the New York City Metropolitan area with a mission of offering a leading-edge, transformative education. The campus is a lively, close-knit community that encourages individual growth and exploration. The faculty are not just educators but also mentors who inspire lifelong learning.

 

The current verification process did not match the student-centered mission of the college, according to the financial office. It was taking too much time and effort from the team. “We were spending a significant amount of time following up with students at different stages in the verification process and that time was affecting our ability to provide other key support and counseling services,” said the Director of Student Financial Services.

 

The Financial Aid team was struggling with paperwork and falling behind connecting with students, causing inefficiency. They knew they needed to avoid further loss of time and resources.

 

“We knew outsourcing was likely our best option to manage our resources and after seeing Verification Gateway (VG) in action, we were excited about the opportunity for change.”

 

Verification Gateway from Inceptia is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. Their services include interview-style questions, secure document collection, complete reporting, and personal interaction when necessary. Speaking with existing VG clients made it clear to the Financial Aid team that VG would be the key to the progress they were looking for.

 

The student and parent-first user-interface design of VG breaks down the process into an easy-to-manage task list. If additional communication is needed, the VG team is there to help. Having a dedicated team focused solely on verification has improved workflow processing and offers greater support to students to ensure verifications are completed in a timely manner. The Inceptia partnership has allowed the Financial Aid team to free up key resources so they can better support their students.

 

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

 

 

Greensboro College provides a supportive and inclusive environment for its diverse student body and strives to make higher education accessible through its robust financial aid programs, ensuring that students have the resources they need to pursue their educational goals. For Student Financial Services, the school theme, “Graduate ready for anything” means removing barriers to keep students and staff focused on what students really need can be the difference in a positive college experience.

 

“There are so many little things that can be missed in financial aid throughout a student’s journey,” says, Lindsay Latham, Senior Director of Student Financial Services. Greensboro’s Student Financial Services Team was handling verification, but after some audit findings, the changing regulatory landscape added further pressure to the team. “With a small team, even with a small student body, it could completely tie up at least one full-time person just sorting out the details.”

 

Greensboro implemented Verification Gateway, a full-service solution that streamlines the verification process, to relieve the stress of verification on the team. “Outsourcing isn’t replacing anyone on our team, it’s adding to our team. When a student is completing verification they often need assistance multiple times. Inceptia is handling all of the verification questions and streamlining the dreaded verification process. This allows our team to focus on the students themselves and their actual financial needs. Now, more than ever our students need us to have time to sit down with them and hold financial conversations. Inceptia allows us to have that available time.”

 

Being able to really focus on students themselves led Greensboro to also implement Repayment Counseling Outreach, an Inceptia solution to connect and counsel delinquent borrowers. “We haven’t been doing repayment for a while. Inceptia’s team keeps up with all of the information our borrowers need to know to knowledgeably make decisions on their repayment route, so we can keep our general knowledge, but rely on Inceptia to connect with borrowers and answer questions. It’s well worth the investment to save the time and stress on our team.”

 

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

 

 

Alvernia University has a longstanding commitment to helping students develop their innate talents, discover their passions and lead successful lives with deep meaning and purpose. By offering experiential learning and superior support throughout the student, Alvernia graduates are well-prepared to thrive in the workplace. The Student Financial Services team extends that same commitment to students when it comes to their financial future and student loan repayment by ensuring all students have access to resources to help with successful repayment.

 

Even though the team had a process for working with students and guiding them to successful loan repayment, Alvernia’s student loan defaults were rising and with a small student population, just a few can have a big impact. “When I started seeing a consistent rise in number of students defaulting, I knew we needed to make a change to our approach of loan repayment counseling,” said Christine Saadi, Sr. Director of Student Financial Services. Ms. Saadi met with the Inceptia team to evaluate the situation. “We needed to figure out if we could evaluate which students may run into repayment trouble in the future, but that takes a lot of time and our team was spread thin already,” comments Ms. Saadi.

 

Realizing those borrowers that may have trouble is just part of the challenge. Once they could predict potential defaulters, Ms. Saadi and team knew that even if they added another person it would take more counseling time than available to offer the support the Alvernia students are accustomed to.

 

It’s also a challenge to find someone that has the depth of repayment knowledge, or wants to, to keep up with the regulations and guidelines associated with the changing repayment landscape.

 

“Once we determined the issues and talked through our goals with Inceptia, we all saw how the Inceptia Repayment Counseling Outreach team could help us by doing the pro-active outreach and counseling needed to help our at-risk borrowers.”

 

Inceptia’s highly-trained counselors have a deep concentration of loan repayment and soft skills training to help student borrowers understand their repayment requirements and determine next best steps for their financial situation and changes that have occurred. The Repayment Counseling Outreach program includes multiple contact methods to nudge borrowers into taking actions that will put them on the right track for repayment, including live support to answer questions.

 

Alvernia’s students that are slipping into delinquency are being proactively contacted and have a dedicated resource to help them successfully recover, allowing the Student Financial Services team to focus on other student counseling concerns and continue the student support the school strives to provide. “The value in knowing Inceptia cares for our students like we do allows us to concentrate on our strengths and purpose to give the best to our students. The return on our investment in Repayment Counseling Outreach is positive for our students, staff and institution overall,” concludes Ms. Saadi.

 

Find out how Repayment Counseling Outreach can benefit your school. Contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.

 

 

West Georgia Technical College (WGTC) is a unit of the Technical College System of Georgia serving its surrounding communities through relevant training that leads to associate degrees, diplomas, technical certifications as well as continuing education. One of the ways WGTC supports student success is through a variety of class sessions including the “mini-mester.” Looking to increase enrollment for this beneficial session, they needed to find a way to reach students in time.

 

With the mini-mester fast approaching, WGTC faced additional challenges in the form of technology updates and staffing changes – common disruptions to which many campuses can relate. This resulted in increased time spent on training, while still tasked with assisting students through the enrollment funnel and maintaining diligent student contact.

 

Lori Basham, Director of Admissions, knew they needed to find another way to boost their enrollment. “Mini-mesters are always an enrollment challenge because there aren’t as many classes and students may not be ready, but the benefit to meeting a deadline and earning credit in half the time is well worth it. Having had various roles in the department, I knew we didn’t have the time as a team to provide the level of personal touch that is necessary for students to realize these benefits in time.”, said Basham.

 

WGTC’s mission is to be a model of innovation and excellence in technical education, recognized as an outstanding economic and community partner, and a nimble provider of pathways to rewarding careers. Basham explains, “Three of our core values are integrity, professionalism, and student success. We knew Inceptia would be able to relay our values through the training that is provided to their student advocates and that our students would be taken care of just as if we were communicating with them.”

 

Each member of the Inceptia student advocate counseling team goes through extensive initial training, including assessments and quality assurance checks. In addition, the team participates in monthly internal and external training to keep their skills current along with soft skills practices to thoughtfully manage their student conversations for a successful outcome.

 

WGTC provided a targeted list of students to be contacted through Inceptia’s strategic Student Outreach Program. With a 30% phone contact rate and nearly 64% email open rate, 35% of the students registered, and 36% enrolled by the deadline. “We provided a small list and still had success with the program. The return on our investment in the Outreach Program drastically outweighed the cost. We gained insight into what was holding our students back from mini-mester enrollment and we know our students were contacted with care,” says Basham. We’re already planning on our next campaign with Inceptia.”

  To learn more about Student Outreach Programs, contact your Business Development representative or visit inceptia.org.