It's been a busy fall with VASFAA hosting not only our first Leadership Symposium, but also NASFAA Decentralized Training, a Support Staff Training workshop and the High School Guidance Counselor Workshops. The VASFAA Board of Directors held its Fall Board Meeting in Charlottesville in November in conjunction with the Leadership Symposium.

Our Leadership symposium focused on establishing a vision for Financial Aid from a consensus of the state's Financial Aid Professionals. The vision would be a document which will outline for the executive and legislative branches what the Commonwealth should consider in terms of planning, authorizing programs, and, to a lesser extent, the appropriation of funds. It is the Board's intention to take the vision document developed as a result of our symposium and visit the Executive and Legislative branches of the Commonwealth during our winter board Meeting in January, which is being held to coincide with the General Assembly Session. The Leadership Symposium had approximately 40 attendees and was hosted by the University of Virginia. The Symposium attendees were challenged by Dr. David Breneman, Dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Dr Breneman, is an economist and authority on the finance and economics of higher education. His three decades of experience include service as a professor, college president, think-tank scholar, and dean. Dr. Breneman, The attendees labored diligently in pursuit of "perfect vision", and the outcomes are being developed into a deliverable product. One of the positive outcomes was the sense of common purpose and the common good among the diverse institutions, without regard for what may be best for an individual institution - a true sense of community.

This is also the first time in many years that the Association has utilized the NASFAA decentralized training. This year VASFAA sent two members to the NASFAA training session; Brad Barnett and Erik Melis. The 'Brad and Erik show' is presently under way around the state, with all expenses for members attending being born by the association. We got a relatively late start with our decentralized training, and will continue into January with our sessions to allow institutions from all over the state to take advantage of this benefit of membership. We're also underway with our High School Guidance Counselor workshops around the state. The VASFAA High School Relations Committee has developed a brochure of known high school counselor financial aid education workshops. VASFAA promotes such workshops to all Virginia high school counselors and provides financial assistance to college hosts to assist with food costs for the workshops. In addition, this year VASFAA is a co sponsor with SCHEV and ECMC of the Opportunities booklet, a very informative guide to College, college admissions and financial aid in the Commonwealth. Super Saturday is an annual VASFAA event sponsored by the Awareness Committee. The event is hosted at various sites throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia to assist the college-bound citizens of Virginia in conquering the college financial aid hurdles. Each site will conduct a financial aid workshop that explains the federal and state financial process, which will consist of a PowerPoint presentation and discussion. There will be a Q&A period also. This is open to parents and students of all grades. The main focus of the event is to assist high school seniors and their parents with completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on-line. Once the student leaves the event, they would have initiated the financial aid process for any school they are interested in attending and would have met the priority filing date for most Virginia colleges. This event is open to the general public and assistance with the FAFSA on-line will be given to new as well as returning college students. As an added bonus, there will be a $100 Book Scholarship drawing at each host site.

Welcome to our new and improved VASFAA web site! As many or our fellow state organizations and SASFAA have transitioned to ATAC for web services, VASFAA has also moved to ATAC for hosting and managing our web site, so tell us what you think about our web site (www.vasfaa.org).

My thanks to all those dedicated VASFAA members who support both the organization and the profession by the labors and their deeds. I wish all of you the Happiest of Holidays, and hope the New Year is a joyous one for you, your families and your students!

Tom Morehouse
President
VASFAA