By Guadalupe Santos-Sanchez, Staff Reporter
There is a hiring freeze at CNM because the funding limit of 300 work positions that are offered were filled at the end of August, said Senior Director of Financial Aid, Lee Carrillo.
“Unfortunately, the allocations have gotten a little bit smaller and the pay has gone up, if you’re paying students more but you’re getting less money then things are going to get tighter as far as positions are concerned, and that’s kind of what we’ve ran into right now,” said Associate Director of Financial Aid, Joseph Ryan.
Students get paid the minimum wage in Albuquerque, which is $8.60, he said.
The hiring limit is because there is a certain amount of money that can be spent, Ryan said.
The award given to CNM is divided into an amount that allows for roughly 300 students to be hired as work studies, he said.
“I think we have a little bit higher than what the calculation might actually kick out, because we know some students don’t work all 40 hours every single two weeks, some students take a week off or only work 10 hours a week,” Ryan said.
There are funds coming in from the federal government, from the state government, and from CNM, Ryan said.
The specific amounts from each are 1.312 million from state, 690 thousand from federal, and 600 thousand from CNM for the 2014-2015 school year, Ryan said.
“The total state and federal funding includes a match that CNM has to make for those funds, 20% for state and 25% for federal,” he said.
In the totals above 20% of the state total is comprised of CNM funds and 25% of the federal total is comprised of CNM funds, he said.
New positions will not be available until the spring but for this term there is no waiting list, Carrillo said.
“There is no one waiting to be hired, we’re glad that we were able to provide these work-study positions to 300 of our students,” he said.
Eloy Chavez, Student Employee at Job Connection Services said that students constantly go into the office to ask for work study employment.
Some students get upset and do not understand, he said, but most realize that just like with jobs outside the school, jobs at CNM are hard to get.
“I continue to help them get their resume started and their application, everything, and when December 11 starts, hit the pavement,” he said.
This is because December 11 is when employment is going to open up again, he said.
Job postings will be available December 1, he said.
However, the employers will not be hiring until next semester, said Amanda Rubio, Supervisor of the Student Employees for Job Connection Services.
“For individuals without a job that’s a long time not to be working so it’s really hard on me to have to turn people down but also hard on me being where I can’t hire a student employee, I do have an open position and I’m not able to hire,” she said.
At Job Connection Services, they assist students and graduates with applying for jobs, Rubio said, and currently they have to turn down a lot of people primarily looking for student employment jobs.
She tells the students that there might still be something outside of CNM, she said, but they are not having any of it.
“They’re looking for a job here on campus for the convenience. They know a lot of employers out there won’t work with the school schedule, so they’re looking for the flexibility that you’re pretty much guaranteed to have with a student employee position,” she said.
Her colleagues and other employers also find themselves with job openings and inability to hire anybody, she said, they are dependent on student employees to get things done, and without them it hinders their job.
Most people think it is Job Connection Services who control student employment because they are the ones having to turn students down but it is dependent on the funds that financial aid has, she said.
“It’s all government funded, and there’s only so much funds to go around, so the students that do qualify for student employment should start looking right away to find a job, because if they procrastinate then their chances of finding a job will go down,” Chavez said.
FAFSA bases its work study qualifying methods largely on low-income criteria and that helps CNM identify who is eligible for work study, Carrillo said.
“Being qualified for work-study allows students to become eligible for work-study positions. Students are selected based largely on who has the greatest needs based on the low-income criteria,” Carrillo said.
Qualifying them does not mean that there is funds to pay them, he said.
“CNM needs to make sure there are enough students eligible for the positions in order to fill the maximum number of positions within the funding limits,” he said.
Work-study is a form of financial aid and it is a part-time job for students on campus, Ryan said, to help them cover the expenses that come with being a student.
Students work up to 20 hours a week and no more than 40 hours every two weeks, he said.
Tag: Lee Carrillo
Work-study qualified
By Daniel Johnson, Investigative Reporter
Students can go through the MyCNM website and access the financial aid page to locate the information needed to start the process of a loan, federal or state funded aid, or to qualify for work-study positions within the school, said Lee Carrillo, Senior Director of Financial Aid, Scholarships and Veteran Services.
All students need to fill out the FASFA form to qualify for financial aid, he said, but once the FASFA form is filed electronically it will be submitted and reviewed by the financial aid department.
And once reviewed a student will be informed of what they qualify for, he said.
“Almost anyone who comes into the school can qualify for loans, aid, or some form of work-study,” Carrillo said.
There are currently two different types of financial aid assistance, he said.
The first is need based he said, which allows a student that qualifies the opportunity to collect assistance from state and federal funds, as well as becoming work-study qualified.
The second is no need work-study, which means that a student that may not qualify for assistance but they could still qualify to work on campus as a student work-study, he said.
“Most no need work-studies can still receive loans as well as working for a paycheck,” he said.
Work-study allows students an opportunity to get a job at one of the seven CNM campuses, he said.
A work-study employee can work up to twenty hours a week and earn from $8.50 to $9.50 an hour, he said.
The rate of pay all depends on what the job duties are and what position a student would be in at the current job, he said.
“There are few jobs that pay $9.50 an hour but they do exist,” Carrillo said.
If a student is work-study qualified they will again need to access the MyCNM page to look for work-study jobs, he said.
Some paper work will need to be filled out in the financial aid office at main campus if a student is hired as work-study, he said.
If a student is under the age of 24, then they will need their parents tax information as well as their own, if they are over 24 and had a job in the past they will need their own tax information, he said.
“Most of the filing process can be done on-line but if a student ever has any questions they can feel free to visit us in the financial aid office with any questions they may have,” Carrillo said.
Everybody that comes to CNM has a financial advisor available to them he said and they are always willing to help students that need it as well.
At this point in the year it is essential that a student submits their paperwork as quick as possible to get qualified because as of right now it is late in the season, he said.
“If a student wants to get it going they should start now and come in to get on the right path to succeed,” Carillo, said.
For more information on what is offered to students via financial aid, go to cnm.edu/ depts/financial-aid or make an appointment with a financial aid advisor at 224-3090 .
How to file a financial aid appeal
By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photo by Angela Le Quieu
For students who are on Financial Aid suspension, but who are close to graduation may have a few options to complete their degree program, which includes the Graduation Incentive Scholarship or an appeal to Financial Aid.
The Graduation Incentive Scholarship is available through the Academic Advisers Office and students who are within one semester of completing their degree and have no other financial aid or grants may qualify.
Students who are on financial aid suspension due to the satisfactory academic progress guidelines, which include reaching the maximum time frame, issues with their completion rate, or low grade point average, can fill out an appeal form explaining what extenuating circumstances have caused them issues through the Financial Aid office.
Student who fill out an appeal before the end of the spring term should know that the appeal will not go through until at least 10 days after the grades from this term have been posted, and it is recommended that students who are in the appeals process set up a payment plan through the Cashier’s Office in order to hold their registered classes.
If a financial aid appeal is not an option, students without any funding can seek a Graduation Incentive Scholarship which covers tuition and fees, but not books or other expenses.
In order to see if a student is qualified for the scholarship they must make an appointment with an Academic Adviser, who will be able to sign a student up for the scholarship, but money is limited, so the school cannot give the scholarship to everyone and acting fast is key to qualifying.
Senior Director for Financial Aid, Lee Carrillo said that colleges are not required by the Department of Education to provide an appeal opportunity, which handles the guidelines for satisfactory academic progress on which the financial suspensions are based.
“We choose to, because we want to give students an opportunity to succeed,” Carrillo said.
For more information on appeals call financial aid at 224-3090, or to inquire about the Graduation Incentive Scholarship call Academic Advisement at 224-4321.
8 steps students can take to make an appeal:
Step one: Pick up an Appeal Form and Financial Aid and Scholarship Services located in the Student Services Center on Main campus, Tom Wiley Hall on Montoya campus, or Student Services on Westside in WS II, room 106.
Step two: Students must have their FAFSA submitted for the current award year, be enrolled in an eligible major for the term, and enrolled by the first day of the term being appealed.
Step three: Fill out the information on the form.
Step four: Students need to complete the SAP Web Presentation which can be found at cnm.edu/ depts./fass/requirements/sappres.php. After going through the information, there is a short assessment that must be printed and attached to the Appeal Form. Each time a student makes an appeal they must complete this step.
Step five: Students need a typed letter that is a personal statement and it must also be attached to the Appeal Form.
Tips for step five: 1. Include college history and explanations for circumstances in which the student had issues. 2. Make sure to include resolutions to any extenuating conditions. 3. The people who review the appeals are looking for patterns, if there are multiple terms in which a student has had issues they must each be explained.
Step six: Gather supporting documents and attach those to the form, which can include statements from a physician, a death notice from a close relative, letters of support from a third party, or confirmation of circumstances.
Step seven: Visit the Academic Advisors Office and get a print out of a unofficial transcript, and also have a CAPP report run.
A signed copy with the students remaining credit hours must be attached to the form.
Step eight: The completed form with the entire attached document must be taken to the Financial Aid office.
Employment freeze affects work-study
By Jonathan Baca, Copy Editor
CNM has initiated a hiring freeze for all work-study employment positions, and all departments will be unable to hire any new student employees until July 1, when the new fiscal year begins, said Lee Carrillo, Director of Financial Aid and Scholarship Services.
The hiring freeze should not affect any current work-study employees, but any departments who lose any employees will not be able to replace them, and will have to make do until they can hire new employees in July, Carrillo said.
“It all comes down to one thing; we have limited funding,” Carrillo said.
The school currently hires about 300 to 350 work-study employees per year, he said.
One change that will affect current employees is that pay periods will not go up from 20 to 30 weekly hours this summer as it has in the past, because there are no extra funds this year, Carrillo said.
This increase had been done in summers past, because there had been a surplus at the end of those years, and the school is required to spend the entire allocation before the end of the fiscal year. If there is any money left over at the start of the new year, the amount of money the State and Federal governments give would likely be adjusted, and the school would receive less the next year, he said.
This is the second year in a row that a hiring freeze has had to be implemented in order to ensure that enough money was left to continue paying existing student employees, he said.
Although the school could cut student employees’ hours in order to keep from running out of funds, Carrillo said that the school has looked at the affect this would have, and would only do this as a last option.
“We look at all those things, and we hope it doesn’t come to that, which I don’t think it will,” Carrillo said.
The funds that go toward paychecks for all work-study employees come from a collective fund from Federal and State allocations, and from CNM itself, he said.
Director of Marketing and Communications, Brad Moore said that $600,000 comes from the Federal government, $1.2 million is given by the State, and the school kicks in an additional $650,000, which is more than the 25 percent the school is required by law to contribute.
“We want to be able to hire and employ as many work-study students as possible. The administration feels it is important for students to get an opportunity to have employment here, so the decision is made to add money to that fund,” Moore said.
At the start of each fiscal year, the school must estimate how many work-study employees it can hire based on the amount of money in the fund, the number of hours in a typical pay period, and the hourly wage, Carrillo said.
Although it was not legally required of them, the school did raise the hourly wage to $8.50 when Albuquerque voters raised the city’s minimum wage at the start of 2013. The school then gave work-study employees an additional ten cent raise in January, Carrillo said.
Carrillo said that the recent increases have changed the math significantly and contributed to the recent freezes, but that the school is still dedicated to hiring as many student employees as it can.
“Once we hit that plateau, we’ve got to freeze. And everybody who has a job can keep that job, but we just have to make sure that we make it to the end of the funding year with the allocations we have,” Carrillo said.
Carrillo said that budgeting for the work-study fund can become a delicate balancing act, since some employees work less than others, some quit or are fired, and some vacant positions stay open for long periods of time.
The Financial Aid department has to keep a constant eye on these ever-changing factors in an attempt to predict how much money will be needed to last the entire year. This hiring freeze is the final tool in the toolbox that ensures the money will not run out, Carrillo said.
Moore said that the work-study program is very important to the school and to the employees themselves, because the work they do is valuable to so many departments, and because the students get experience and important references for their future.
“It’s great to have student employees in the work environment because it helps keep us in tune with students and how their day to day lives really are. It’s highly valuable for regular CNM employees to have work-study employees around, to stay in touch with student life,” Moore said.
With talk in Washington about the possibility of raising the Federal minimum wage to $10 an hour or more, Carrillo said that the school would most likely be forced to hire significantly less work-study employees if the raise were to pass, unless they could secure more funding.
Disbursement goes off without a hitch
By Jonathan Baca, Staff Reporter | Photo by Jonathan Baca
Disbursement is always a logistical challenge, and CNM had made several changes to the process this year to make things more efficient, and are discussing even more options for the future, Lee Carrillo, Vice President of Student Services said.
CNM disbursed $21 million to 11,777 students last week, and things went smoother than ever, thanks to less paper checks and a new office at the West Side campus, Carrillo said.
“I’ve done this for 23 years, and I think over all, this is probably the best,” he said.
For students with part-of-term or short term courses, their funds may be split and disbursed in two or more parts, with subsequent checks going out ten days after the start of their late starting classes.
This is an optional federal rule that CNM opted to comply with, mainly to discourage students with short term courses from receiving all of their disbursement, and then leaving school before the end of the semester, Carrillo said.
“This was a way of keeping the student in the classroom, and hopefully making them successful,” Carrillo said.
4,676 students opted for direct deposit this term, having their money sent directly to their bank accounts. This is a 10 percent increase from last semester, and a trend that CNM hopes will continue, Carrillo said.
“It is something we’ve worked towards for forever. Go direct deposit if you have a bank account,” he said.
Students who signed up for direct deposit got their money two days before students who received a paper check, and this has made the process easier and faster for both the Cashiers office and the students, Bursar Christine Duncan said.
“The less paper checks we have to handle, the faster it is,” Duncan said.
Financial Aid and the Marketing and Communication Office teamed up to encourage students to switch to direct deposit, using emails and social media to let students know about the option, Duncan said.
The other big change this semester was the start of disbursement at the West Side campus, which lessened the load for Main and Montoya campuses, Duncan said.
With more staff and resources this year, the West Side campus gave out checks to over 600 students. Montoya campus handled disbursement for over 900 students last week, and this has meant more convenience and shorter lines for everyone, Duncan said.
“We tried to make it a little more convenient for those students at the other campuses, so people didn’t have to drive as far,” Duncan said.
An email was sent out to students, letting them know which campus to go to in order to get their checks. Checks were sent to whichever campus the majority of a student’s classes were held, Duncan said.
Disbursement is a joint effort between Financial Aid, the Cashiers office, and Accounts Payable, and is a team effort, Duncan said.
“This term we changed a couple of things, so we had meetings, talked about it, and made decisions together,” Duncan said.
Financial Aid processes a student’s award eligibility, and the Cashiers office cuts the checks, once a student’s tuition and fees have been paid, Carrillo said.
“We work very well together,” Carrillo said.
With the success of the direct deposit option, CNM has begun discussion about another possibility for disbursement; replacing paper checks with plastic credit cards from a bank, Carrillo said.
The cards would be free to students, and would work like a gift card, with no possibility of overdrafts or further debt, Carrillo said.
The main issue with this option is that many banks would charge a transaction fee every time the card was used, Carrillo said.
Carrillo said the school has received presentations from several banks, but they have not made a decision to go with a particular one yet, and are waiting for the best possible deal, one that would work best for the students.
“We just need to make sure that whichever bank we choose to go with has none, or the minimal fee, so it doesn’t affect the students’ money,” he said.
Carrillo said it would most likely start out as an optional program, like direct deposit, but that it might become mandatory at some point down the line.
No decisions have been made yet, and it is ultimately up to the Executive team whether CNM will implement these cards in the future, Carrillo said.
Most of the student problems with disbursement last week were about confusion over whether they would be getting the full amount of money, and when, said Duncan. According to Carrillo, students get their money ten days after the start of their classes, but for Freshmen and first time borrowers of loans, there is a thirty day wait before their funds are disbursed.
“We want to make sure that they are here and they are doing well before we disburse those loan moneys to them,” Carrillo said.
Carrillo said that many students at times get confused about disbursement because of attending hours, short term courses, ineligibility because of repeat courses, and other issues.
The Financial Aid office tries to communicate with students as much as possible through emails throughout the year, including award letters, schedules, and deadlines, so hopefully students will be less confused if they read these emails carefully, Carrillo said.
“We always have the student in mind when we are sending out these emails, to make them as simple as possible so they understand them,” Carrillo said.