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.

Nestled in the foothills of Mount Scorpion in Henderson, Nevada State College is the first public, four-year institution in the state. The college is home to 5,500 students and is designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution, a majority of whom are first-generation students. Nevada State College offers three schools: School of Education, School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and School of Nursing. The college is known for its green-friendly culture that includes energy-efficient buildings, open community spaces with solar panels, and an organic teaching garden.

Jenna Eastman, Assistant Director of Financial Aid at Nevada State College, said it took her staff six to eight weeks to review verification documents. While her team utilized an internal online platform that relieved some problems – like notifying students if they left incomplete forms – it didn’t solve everything.

“Some documents didn’t get flagged correctly in order for processing to be completed,” said Eastman. This, along with high call volume regarding verification questions, left minimal time for staff to counsel students about financial aid.

Nevada State College’s sister institution, College of Southern Nevada, already had Verification Gateway (VG) in place. This, Eastman said, made choosing a third-party solution easy. 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.

“Our main criteria for outsourcing a solution was making sure verifications would be done more efficiently so we’d have more time to counsel students,” Eastman said. “Inceptia met the criteria so we simply tagged on to College of Southern Nevada’s contract.”

Since VG’s inception in 2018, Eastman was impressed with the results.

“We very rarely had a student walk in or call and ask about verification anymore,” Eastman said. “We could sit down with students and hear what they were saying rather than thinking in our heads ‘oh gosh, I’ve got 10 more students waiting to ask about verifications.”

Initially, students were hesitant about using VG.

“They would tell our staff they wanted to talk to a ‘real’ financial aid person,” Eastman said. “But when they started to experience VG at its complete capacity, students realized how easy the verification process was. The negative feedback died down quickly,” Eastman said.

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

Located in the heart of downtown Chicago, Loyola University has been making a name for itself since its debut in 1870. Loyola is a private, Catholic university nationally recognized for its elite academic and Division 1 athletic programs. 93 percent of faculty own the highest degree in their fields and students benefit from a small student-faculty ratio. Beyond the classroom and sports, Loyola is committed to caring for its Chicago home. With more than 17,000 students – 11,000 undergraduates – there are plenty of hands to help keep the city of Chicago thriving. Students clean up parks and neighborhoods, mentor children, and run farmers markets to make healthy food more accessible to the Chicago community.

Tobyn Friar, Director of Financial Aid at Loyola, said as the student enrollment increased it put a burden on his financial aid staff to collect, review, and update verification. 26 percent of students are Pell Grant eligible, which made verification an overwhelming task.

“The extra work we had took us away from spending quality time with students and parents,” Friar said. “We weren’t able to walk them through all of their financial aid options. We weren’t providing poor customer service, but there is a level of expectation of service that comes with a private university that we weren’t giving.”

Friar knew he needed a verification solution to help his team. Rather than hiring additional staff, Friar opted to find a third-party solution. Verification Gateway (VG) from Inceptia is an automated online platform that streamlines federal verification processing for students and schools. With interview-style questions, simple and secure document collection, reporting and personal interaction if needed, VG was the service-oriented solution for Loyola. “I easily submitted an online request form to Inceptia to learn more and here we are today!” Friar said. “Initial outreach to Inceptia was really great. Within a week of sending the request form, we had a demo call scheduled with the Inceptia team, Inceptia’s IT staff, and our IT/Operations staff.”

“We waited to officially launch VG because we didn’t want to do it mid-year,” Friar said. “Inceptia was ready to go as soon as we were, and they were so responsive to all of our questions.” Friar also believed that while VG did help his team by lessening their workload, the students ultimately benefited. “When verifications are completed more efficiently, students move through the financial aid process faster.”

Loyola needed students to be verified only if they were admitted to the university – and Inceptia made it happen.

“I know Inceptia customizes solutions like we requested for other schools, but the way they did it felt like it was just for us,” Friar said. “They partnered with us every step of the way.”

Since VG’s inception in November 2019, student foot traffic and call volume already decreased. “Before VG, we were fielding approximately 34,000 calls a year,” Friar said. “It was a huge win for our team to implement VG because we could get back to the core of our work.” Students and parents can contact Inceptia’s customer service, rather than the university, regarding verification questions.

The core of their work is educating students on basic financial concepts. “Using VG gave us more time back to educate students on financial aid and how to pay for college successfully,” Friar said.

Friar said without an outsourced solution, verifications would have continued to take longer to process and affected student retention rates.

“Retention is very competitive in the Chicago university market,” Friar said. “When we completed verifications in-house, the typical turnaround time was seven to 10 days, and 12 to 15 days during our peak season. Since VG, our turnaround time was two days.”

Friar said most university financial aid departments feel understaffed and are always looking for additional resources. “Verification is by far the most cumbersome task to complete,” Friar said. “It can only be a benefit to add VG to your school because the pros far outweigh the cons.”

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

Louisiana Community Technical College System (LCTCS) is comprised of 12 community and technical colleges across the state and is committed to serving all students – regardless of geographical, financial, or scholastic barriers. Students can obtain associate degrees, technical diplomas, and industry-based certificates that earn them satisfying jobs. Students can also enter a STEM program, transfer to a four-year university, and finish their high school diploma. In the 2018/2019 school year, more than 30,000 students graduated from LCTCS. Multiple colleges with a variety of educational and workforce opportunities for students keep staff and faculty busy, including those in the enrollment financial aid offices.

Dr. Amy Cable, Executive Director of Enrollment Management Support at LCTCS, oversees the system’s enrollment and financial aid processing. Smaller staff size and high student demands posed an issue for each college when it came to verification processing.

"Some colleges processed verifications in-house and saw students at the same time; it became a problem so the colleges wanted to explore the idea of outsourcing," Cable said. "The LCTCS pursued an RFP (Request for Proposal) in 2017 and Inceptia really stood out." Cable already heard of Inceptia prior to her time at LCTCS and knew they would be a competitive solution. The solution was implemented at four of its respective colleges and led by the college’s enrollment and financial aid teams.

Cable and the team of colleges looked for the following components in a verification solution: implementation and maintenance services; user-friendly adaptability; efficient processing; quick turnaround time; call center for students; timely communication to students and colleges; and a customized pricing structure.

"Inceptia’s Verification Gateway (VG) solution is a trusted name in the business and our solution boxes got checked,” Cable said. “The pricing component was a big decision-making factor because each college paid for completed verifications and not a flat rate."

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.

Four of the 12 colleges utilized VG: Fletcher Technical Community College (2,098 enrollment); Delgado Community College (13,173 enrollment); Central Louisiana Technical Community College (1,437 enrollment); and SOWELA Technical Community College (2,950 enrollment).

With the implementation of VG, staff was more readily available to service students and perform other financial aid work. At SOWELA, a front-line staff member who used VG on a regular basis said her workload was reduced tremendously. "I no longer had to collect documentation for every student chosen for the different types of verification, make needed corrections on the student FAFSA, contact students because of missing information, and store incomplete paperwork. Instead, I had time to counsel students, assist at high school FAFSA completion events, and help with other duties in the office."

Michelle Greco, Director of Enrollment Management at Delgado Community College, said fewer students visit the office with verification questions because VG made the process simple and user-friendly. When questions arose, students contacted Inceptia’s call center, which freed up Greco’s staff to help students with other financial aid questions. She was also pleased with Inceptia’s customer service.

"Their customer service was outstanding,” Greco said. “They reached out to our management team the moment a student called with additional questions or concerns, and they worked with us to ensure the college and Inceptia were communicating a unified message to students."

And while the first year posed some growing pains, Inceptia’s team was quick to resolve them. The team went onsite to the system and individual colleges to fix system bugs in VG and re-evaluated contract agreements to reflect better accuracy of processing time for students. "Inceptia corrected things right away," Cable said.

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

Housatonic Community College is one of 12 community colleges in the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system and is located in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city. Housatonic is devoted to serving students in all capacities of their journeys: whether they want to transfer to a four-year institution, earn an associate degree, or jump straight into the workforce. Housatonic also provides seminars and workshops to fulfill students’ community and personal enrichment needs. Because of the many geographic locations Housatonic serves, its student population varies in economic backgrounds and financial aid plays a big role in helping students pay for college.

Housatonic’s decreased staffing levels in the Financial Aid Office had the potential to be a sizeable challenge for processing verification. The team had taken steps to clean up a previously paper-heavy process, overcome the over-stuffed file cabinets, and increase reporting accuracy. Still, the smaller staff was concerned about falling behind in completing verifications and the overall impact it would have on students. Housatonic wanted to find a solution that made the entire process easier for students to be awarded financial aid.

Omar Livingston, Director of Financial Aid at Housatonic, selected Verification Gateway (VG) as its solution because of the electronic and efficient platform it provided. 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.

"We had a reduction in paperwork and students were awarded much quicker than in the past,” said Livingston. “Even during our busy season in July and August, VG made it less chaotic."

As a parent, Livingston also noticed how quick and easy the verification process was.

"My son was a freshman and selected for verification,” said Livingston. “He created his account online with VG, submitted the paperwork, and his verification was reviewed within two days. He was then awarded financial aid shortly after. Everything was right on schedule and came through quickly."

"One concern we had before implementing VG was from the technology standpoint,” Livingston said. “As an inner-city school, we weren’t sure if some of our students would have a hard time navigating this new verification process and technology or have access to it."

Those fears quickly subsided after students learned how to easily navigate VG’s online platform. With computers and tablets available throughout Housatonic’s campus, all students have the ability to access VG.

"The website was very intuitive and easy to navigate,” said Livingston. “The support materials on the website also make it easy to understand how the verification process works."

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

As a private liberal-arts college with a smaller enrollment – approximately 3,400 students – DeSales University is anything but small in terms of accredited degree programs, academic and community opportunities, and competitive NCAA Division III athletics. Class sizes are intimate (12:1 ratio) and taught by a majority of faculty members who hold the highest professional degrees.

Regardless of DeSales alluring attributes, Joyce Farmer, Director of Financial Aid, concluded that in-house verification processes didn’t work as efficiently as needed causing delays in financial aid packaging.

"We struggled to complete the financial aid verification process in an acceptable timeframe from both a billing and financial aid perspective,” Farmer said. “We needed to be able to provide financial aid packages in a timely manner, ensure financial aid and billing were in sync, and provide excellent customer service to families working through the process of paying for college.

Farmer and her team selected Verification Gateway (VG) as their solution in March 2019. 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 partnership between DeSales and Inceptia proved to be effective from the start. Inceptia team members worked closely with Farmer’s staff to provide in-house training of Verification Gateway’s intuitive system. Once training concluded, Inceptia’s customer service continued to ensure Farmer’s staff was completely well-trained.

"VG is necessary to implement if an academic institution requires fast and efficient financial aid processing," Farmer said.

The end-result was a beyond user-friendly experience for students and families that allowed them to quickly and effectively complete the verification process. Farmer was most pleasantly surprised with the lower call volume from students and families regarding verification questions, and the level of data security Verification Gateway provided. Fewer calls also meant more one-on-one time with students to advise them on other financial aspects. Farmer believes that with verification now outsourced, she and her team can focus on other valuable work that can impact DeSales recruitment and retention efforts.

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