Summer conference report: July is conference month for higher education professionals. Here are highlights from two of them.

PARTIES, SPECIAL EVENTS, AND BAGS OF FREEBIES from vendors usually mark the summer "conference season." This year, however, with increased public and government scrutiny, and the hint of scandal, things were a bit more subdued. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) both seemed aware that all eyes were on their annual conferences in July. Although NACUBO President John Walda said his organization is examining the relationship of vendors to the conference's attendees and would develop a "best practices" guide for future conferences, the extravagance that often marked past shows was less apparent. NASFAA President Dallas Martin had earlier announced new guidelines for how the show was to be conducted. Among the changes were a rule that vendor giveaways must be of nominal value ($10 or less), a ban on vendor-sponsored social activities directed toward conference attendees, and a requirement that demonstration rooms may not be used for meal or reception purposes.

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Although "the frill was gone," attendees still got their money's worth with conferences in which the issues that confront both groups--as well as higher ed in general were front and center.

NASFAA: Treading Lightly

The sweltering July weather wasn't the only thing weighing on NASFAA's conference. The ongoing student loan scandal turned the show floor into a ghost town and made a review of NASFAA's Statement of Ethical Principles two well-attended sessions. Around 3,100 people attended the conference, held this year in Washington, D.C.

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A new Code of Conduct for Institutional Financial Aid Professionals was adopted in May 2007, and is intended to clarify The Statement of Ethical Principles that has been effective since April 1999. The sessions, which were held on the first two days of the conference, consisted of practically a line-by-line review and discussion of the Code of Conduct.

As part of the code advises against accepting gifts of more than "nominal value," the gifts on the show floor ranged from pens to Slinkys.

One exhibitor, Education Finance Partners, redesigned its booth so attendees could see all the key information but didn't have to interact, q-he large panel at the back of the booth displayed a chart with a blind comparison of lender terms and fees. Viewers could lift a panel to see the company names. Founder Tamera Briones said the approach was proving popular. She said the company was benefiting from the move to a minimum of three lenders on a preferred lender list. "We are being selected because we have the best product," she said.

According to the company's website, they reached an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to "remove the appearance of any impropriety."

"It's business as usual for us," Briones said during the conference. "We haven't had to modify our behavior." The company is revising its Founder's Promise program, through which it uses proceeds to assist students in their educational goals.

Another company that is benefiting from the expanded lender lists is Graduate Leverage. President Dan Thibeault said the company was on 50 lists, with around half of the schools added after the scandal broke. "Financial aid officers have been unfairly characterized," Thibeault offered, adding that it was interesting "no one has quantified the cost to students." He said market forces were already starting to change the industry and predicted there would be greater transparency and more open standards of certification of loans in the future.

The other news from the conference was the announcement of the retirement of NASFAA President Dallas Martin, effective December 15. He said he has been planning to step down for the last year. During closing remarks, Martin encouraged aid officers to continue to help the neediest students find means to finance their education.

Of the 92 exhibitors on hand, last year's rabble-rouser, MyRichUncle, was nowhere to be seen.

NACUBO in NOLA

Providing good leadership is not easy, but recent challenges for higher education executives have been especially tough. NACUBO conference planners reflected the current state of affairs with sessions that covered such topics as the new Sarbanes-Oxley guidelines and the fallout from the student loan scandals.

Most immediate, though, was the firsthand recounting of leaders of Gulf Coast area colleges and universities devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in late summer 2005. The New Orleans area--and its higher education institutions--are still affected two years later, noted members of a panel who participated in a session titled "Phoenix from the Ashes: Leading after Surviving Disaster."

Area higher education leaders who managed in the aftermath of the crisis had to make crucial and quick decisions that impacted everything including student safety, data recovery, and personnel.

Marvalene Hughes, president of Dillard University, a private and historically black IHE located in New Orleans, recalled that every building on her campus, save for one, was devastated by flood and wind. All of the university's 2,200 students were evacuated to other areas. Recovery was daunting, said Hughes, who was less than two months on the job when Hurricane Katrina hit. Hughes, who had come to the city after serving as president of California State University, Stanislaus, was not accustomed to hurricane seasons and the potential wreckage.

"There were people who didn't think Dillard should rebuild after Hurricane Katrina," she told NACUBO attendees. Some state officials thought it best that the university relocate outside New Orleans. Hughes was determined to keep Dillard in the city, given that the two had an intertwined history. Dillard had been a New Orleans institution since 1869, Hughes recalled. Her main focus was to stay and rebuild and to plead her case to all who were interested. She not only raised money but also chased down insurance claims and secured support from Brown University to help draw up architectural plans.

Meanwhile, Hughes faced the problem of finding temporary quarters. Days after the storm she was heading for a meeting in the convention and business district, which is close to the city's historic French Quarter, and had an inspiring idea as she walked by the New Orleans Hilton. "After the storm there were no guests there. I asked if we could make an agreement to have students stay there and hold classes there." The Hilton agreed, and Dillard was temporarily back in business.

Today the enrollment is down from the pre-Katrina 2,200 but is growing steadily and is now at 1,200. By June 2007, the university's administration department had moved back to campus.

"Your people are looking for you to lead--you can't run and hide," added Willis Lott, president of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Perkinston Campus. He, like Hughes, was eager to get back to work after Hurricane Katrina, and to establish some order and normalcy at an extraordinary time. Lott wanted to open the campus for classes two weeks after the storm. He missed his goal only by a few days. The campus opened for business 17 days later.

All but 25 of the 800 full-time staffers came back to work.

"Some thought it was too early," said Lott. He felt, though, that students and staff coming back together would facilitate a necessary healing process. "As I went around the coast and looked in peoples' eyes I could see the anxiety, fear, and hopelessness."

He countered any resistance from the staff and knows now, in hindsight, that he made the right choice.

"Last year a faculty member e-mailed me about six months after Katrina. She wanted to thank me for getting us back up and going. Work is the only normal thing left in her life. She told me that hers is the only house in her neighborhood that is inhabited. She sees devastation everywhere she goes. At least at work she can come to a beautiful campus."

Although three buildings were devastated by wind damage, others experienced flooding that was immediately addressed. "We dried everything out to prevent mold damage," Lott said.

At this point reconstruction to the Perkinston campus is almost complete, but enrollment is still down and may remain so for a while. People can't afford reconstruction, and the cost to insure homes has increased beyond what is affordable, he said. Insuring a home in the Gulf Coast region might cost several hundred dollars or more per month, which amounts to the value of an extra mortgage payment for many. In all, enrollment for the five centers of the MGCCC system is down 23 percent, Lott reported. For Lott, that represents a loss of $7 million in state funds.

One way to address the loss in funding has been to plan staff changes strategically. While no jobs have been cut, some staffers have opted to work at other campuses.

Lott added that he could not have coped without a good disaster plan, and MGCCC had one in place pre-Katrina. That was reviewed and updated exhaustively after the storm.

Timothy Ryan, chancellor, University of New Orleans, echoed this advice. "We had done a post mortem after Hurricane Ivan. We learned from this." The area surrounding the UNO campus was completely flooded in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, but the IT department had had a plan in place for saving data and retrieving it in an emergency situation.

"In times like these you learn a lot about yourself and the people you work with," added Lott. "They are looking to you to have strength and to get the ball rolling."

NACUBO conference-goers also learned of techniques and tools that could help them do their jobs better--and stay within existing and pending regulations. One widely attended session focused on the introduction of a new benchmarking tool for tuition costs. For years that data had been collected and distributed as spreadsheets on a CD. The NACUBO Benchmarking Tool (developed by the Exeter Group and Cognos), released in August, gives business officers access to that information online. Now users can view and compare tuition discounting information against self-selected peer groups. The result is a detailed multidimensional analysis that helps identify the tuition discounting strategies that best suit an institution's needs. All survey information is aggregated and presented anonymously to maintain confidentiality.

Phil Doolittle, executive vice president and chief operations and planning officer at the University of Redlands (Calif.) told attendees the new system let him choose peer group sets and customize analysis parameters to get the information he needed. "It has evolved the tuition discounting survey from a 'one size fits all' set of complex, static data to a dynamic, decision-support model that is more personalized and more meaningful to each higher education institution," he said.

NACUBO's Walda said the Benchmarking Tool, available through the organization's website, will be expanded to include over 700 universities by the fall. The tuition discounting application is the first in a series of benchmarking solutions that NACUBO plans to make available to members in topical areas such as endowment management and key financial indicators.