The Southeast Board of Regents added four new policies and announced substantial changes to the Financial Aid Department at their first meeting Friday, Sept. 21.

Director of Student Financial Services Matthew Kearney gave a report about the restructure of the financial aid office and some of the changes they are making.

“Before, there were two directors, one over student accounts and one over financial aid, and it was determined that it would be better to have one director over everything and then three teams under that individual,” said Kearney. “I now have a team that handles operations, a student services team and a systems and compliance team.”

In the restructure, each team is given specific goals to work toward. Some of these goals include strengthening compliance with federal regulations and creating more efficiencies for students and customers on campus.

In the process of working through these goals, they have changed some things. One big change is students no longer have to go on and accept granted scholarships, however, loans still have to be accepted.

There is also a new Copper Dome scholarship being offered.

“We are finding that we aren’t using that data to make any kind of decisions as far as the institution is concerned,” Kearney said. “It just became a roadblock for students to delay the inevitable of the student getting billed the full amount and having to call the office.”

Another change being made is refund checks are now going to be tracked. This must be done since they have be cashed within a certain amount of time , otherwise the money has to be returned to the federal government or another check issued.

They also discussed the acceptance of four new policies at the meeting. Vice president of Finance and Administration Kathy Mangels presented the policies to the board.

Policy 10-09 Information Security Risk Management outlines how the university’s Information Technology Department defines and implements the risk management process to reduce threats to the continued safe operation of university IT systems and data.

Policy 10-10 Workstation Security defines responsibility and level of standards for ensuring information privacy and security at the end user device level.

Policy 10-11 Data Security defines responsibility and level of standards for ensuring information privacy and security when handling sensitive and potentially sensitive university data.

Policy 10-12 Information Technology Emergency Operations Plan outlines how the university’s Information Technology Department defines and implements the emergency operations plan for the continued operation, and eventual full recovery, of critical IT systems in the event of a disaster or other emergency situation.