Mission
The Office of Financial Aid & Scholarships is devoted to providing students the information and support our student body needs to pursue their educational goals. We provide access, aid, and advisory services to the UA Little Rock campus community to further student recruitment, enrollment, and retention. We strive to do what is best for our students.
Summary Narrative
1) Improve student recruitment and yield processes
- Supported Admissions and Recruitment events, including multiple Enroll & Go events, Discover Day, Experience, Orientation & Transfermation.
- Implemented new 50% off tuition and fees scholarship.
- Video award letters allowed the department to move away from ineffective hard copy letters.
- Continued to expand Ocelot Chatbot to give students the opportunity to get information 24/7/365 which also cuts down on emails and phone calls to allow staff to devote additional time toward processing.
- Financial Aid attended multiple recruitment visits at Amazon facilities to help grow our relationship and help interested employees learn about financial aid.
2) Stabilize the student aid portfolio necessary for effective merit- and need-based aid
- Continued the success of the 50% off tuition and fees scholarship for incoming freshmen in fall 2022 and spring 2023.
3) Prioritize compensation, professional development, and work environment necessary to recruit and retain a diverse student affairs staff
- Reemphasized the value of professional development by sending staff to off-site conferences for training and development.
- Continued to leverage virtual conferences and webinars offered by national Financial Aid organizations.
At A Glance
- Continued to build on the highly successful chatbot
- Awarded over $75 million in financial aid to students.
- Resumed sending financial aid award letters to incoming freshmen as videos. Viewer rates have eclipsed 40%
- Met with over 2,200 students in the Financial Aid offices with an average wait time of under 10 minutes.
- Received over 25,000 scholarship applications in ScholarshipUniverse
- Merit and mentored scholarship offers for fall ‘23 are up nearly 300% compared to last year. This can be attributed to earlier, more timely offers as well as students and counselors sending credentials in earlier.
Assessment 1
Alignment with UA Little Rock Goal
Access | Increase student access to transformative educational experiences that are affordable, versatile, and relevant.
Alignment with Student Affairs Goal
Stabilize the student aid portfolio necessary for effective merit- and need-based aid
Goal
Use at least 90% of FWS allotment
Type of assessment (learning outcome or operational)
Operational
Activity or experience being assessed
Usage of FWS. Federal Work Study has been down since the pandemic and we need to reverse that trend.
Assessment artifact
Data: We used available data to determine how much FWS funding was used and where it was used (dept. or off campus). That data will be compared to prior years to evaluate if there were any changes.
Time period assessment was done
The assessment was done in Summer 2023 based on usage for fall ‘22 and spring ‘23
Results
Federal Work Study is still significantly down compared to before the pandemic.
Continuous improvement process
We have enlisted other departments and divisions to help spread the word to students of the FWS program. We hope this outreach that began in July for fall ‘23 will help students proactively search for positions.
WHEN: August 2023
Assessment 2
Alignment with UA Little Rock Goal
Access | Increase student access to transformative educational experiences that are affordable, versatile, and relevant.
Alignment with Student Affairs Goal
Stabilize the student aid portfolio necessary for effective merit- and need-based aid
Goal
Double applications for mentored scholarship programs.
Type of assessment (learning outcome or operational)
Operational
Activity or experience being assessed
Effectiveness of communication and study of data. Survey students after application closes to determine how they heard about scholarship or what led them to apply. Study of data will show the effectiveness of communication. Effective communication should show an increase in apps.
Assessment artifact
Data
Time period assessment was done
Summer 2023
Results
UA Little Rock offers three “mentored scholarships” that are the most competitive and most lucrative we offer. For fall ‘22, we saw a significant drop in applications for all three programs. Increased communication has led to two of the three programs showing increases in applications including one being up 300%.
Continuous improvement process
Continue to increase outreach to potential applicants about each program.
WHEN: FY24
Assessment 3
Alignment with UA Little Rock Goal
Access | Increase student access to transformative educational experiences that are affordable, versatile, and relevant.
Alignment with Student Affairs Goal
Stabilize the student aid portfolio necessary for effective merit- and need-based aid
Goal
Identify what a quality, effective need-based scholarship looks like at UA Little Rock
Type of assessment (learning outcome or operational)
Operational
Activity or experience being assessed
Comparison to our peer institutions
Assessment artifact
Survey of our peer institution scholarship portfolios. We will use this questionnaire to help build a new need-based scholarship for UA Little Rock but using what other institutions have had success with.
Time period assessment was done
Fall 2022
Results
When looking at what other similar institutions consider “need based” we found that our scholarship portfolio is very generous and aggressive in our need based aid. This can mostly be attributed to the half-off tuition and fees program that was established in FY22. For fall 2022 alone, 57% of the freshmen class received the half-off scholarship, and 59% of the half-off recipients also received the Pell Grant (an indicator that half-off is helping students with the most financial need). The extension of the half-off scholarship, UA Little Rock can continue helping many academically-performing students that can’t enroll in college due to their financial need.
Continuous improvement process
No immediate adjustments have been made to our scholarship portfolio. However, we are continuously looking at how to improve our scholarship offerings to make it more advantageous and inclusive.
WHEN: FY24
