Scholarship Specialist, Associate or Scholarship Specialist, Intermediate

Boise State University • Boise, ID

7d • Onsite

About The Position

The Financial Aid & Scholarships Department is seeking a detail-oriented, student-focused Scholarship Specialist, Associate or Scholarship Specialist, Intermediate. This position will perform essential accounting/financial duties within the Scholarship team by providing oversight in all areas of cash management. Daily review and/or monthly reconciliation of cash and scholarship account balances. The last five years has seen 80% growth in the funding of scholarships for students. The significant increases are most notable in institutional funding, as well as state funded scholarships—primarily the Idaho Opportunity Scholarship and Idaho LAUNCH. The substantial increase in WUE scholarships also represents a commitment on the part of the institution to attract non-resident students. In addition, this position will assist in maintaining the on-line scholarship management tool and work closely with scholarship department chairs. We continue to see increases in the number of students logging into AcademicWorks/Blackbaud to apply for scholarships. At this time, we have virtually all of the academic departments utilizing the software to award their scholarships. The scholarships team has worked very hard to encourage students to apply for scholarships, and utilization has increased each year.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or relevant experience.
• Bachelor’s degree or relevant experience, plus 2 years professional experience.
• Organizational, analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to handle multiple tasks under pressure of deadlines
• Providing quality client services
• Verbal and written communication skills including public speaking and creating presentation materials
• Working effectively in a collaborative, team environment
• Planning, prioritizing, and leading projects to successful completion
• Understanding, interpreting, and following federal and state aid guidelines

Responsibilities

• Review, assist with set up, and monitor all institutional and foundation scholarship funds. In doing this the position is responsible for entering data into OSFA Admin Portal to ensure accurate disbursal of funds and entering data into the Scholarship Database to ensure accurate awarding of the funds. This is completed by first interpreting the guidelines set up by the foundation and donor agreement.
• Use judgment and research skills to assure accurate awarding of scholarship funds per donor request.
• Resolve issues affecting awarding scholarships and Federal Financial Aid within a Students Cost of Attendance.
• Understand federal and state aid regulations and make adjustments to student award packages as impacted by scholarship decisions
• Monitor donor funds and students that have completely withdrawn from the University and return those funds to donors as necessary.
• Comply with local, federal, and state laws to ensure accurate cash handling processes are in place.
• Monitor student attendance and scholarship acceptance and return donor funds to donors if the students fail to attend or fails to comply with donor restrictions.
• Design, modify, and implement a tracking system for the thousands of fund code set up and scholarship account set up to ensure accuracy and consistency.
• Create new scholarship fund codes for new scholarship agreements.
• Participate in Blackbaud Awards Management webinars and stay abreast any software updates and changes.
• Identify best practices and benchmarks.
• Strategize and implement methods to raise client services to those standards.
• Prioritize implementation.
• Identify the needs of the scholarships team.
• Plan, design, and implement programs and projects that will meet those needs and ensure the success of the client services team.
• Skills in complementary fields may include, but not be limited to, Business administration, public administration, counseling, human resource management, tax preparation, economics, human performance improvement, and educational technology.
• Advice and counsel students and families.
• Inform and advise on the financial aid and scholarship application process, advice on unique and special circumstances for individual applicants, financial literacy topics, responsible loan borrowing, and options for funding a college education.
• Process aid. Evaluate and review financial aid awards, process documents, respond to student requests. Review student files and perform a need analysis.
• Understand functional/technical aspects of job. Remain current in knowledge and understanding of regulations and technology changes.
• Participate in outreach activities.
• Perform other duties as assigned
• Maintain, track, and adjust student’s accounts for financial resources awarded to students outside of Boise State.
• Oversee the disbursement of approximately $3 million in Scholarships brought to Boise State by our students from outside agencies.
• Review the accounts for outside scholarships and assure account balance.
• Work closely with Senior Accountant to facilitate reconciliation of funds and to maintain fiscal integrity of the hundreds of agency accounts.
• Research and analyze data to ensure fiscal accuracy with the hundreds of outside scholarship checks received by the Scholarship Office yearly.

Benefits

• 12 paid holidays
• University is closed between Christmas and New Year's (requires use of 3 vacation days)
• Between 12-24 annual paid vacation days for full-time Professional and Classified staff depending on position type and years of service
• 10.76% University contribution to your ORP retirement fund (Professional and Faculty employees)
• 11.96% University contribution to your PERSI retirement fund (Classified employees)
• Excellent medical, dental and other health-related insurance coverages
• Tuition fee waiver benefits for employees, spouses and their dependents

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level