News from the States

Colorado
The CAFAA Spring Conference will be held April 18-20 at the Doubletree Hotel in Colorado Springs. The theme is "CAFAA Top Guns" and we've invited a few top guns including Wilma Kasnic and Karen Weber. Decentralized Training will be held on the first day of the Conference.

Nebraska
The members of the Nebraska Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators have been very busy this winter. The weekend of January 19th to 21st fifteen of our members took turns manning a booth in Omaha at the Kidz Explore. This is an even that draws thousands of parents and children to come and explore a lot of different organizations, learn new things like fire safety, good dental hygiene and have fun. NeASFAA sponsored a booth in which we gave parents our "Plan Ahead" pamphlet on preparing for the cost of college, a refrigerator magnet with our necollegehelp.com web site, the Wooly Mammoth color book that talks about school and careers. We also gave each child a "diploma" We asked them what they wanted to be when they were grown up, along with their first name, age and home town. We had a wide variety of careers, everything from a fireman to a paleontologist. We spoke with over 1200 children/parents. On January 24, 2001 the Foundation for Educational Funding in Lincoln sponsored for the second year a call-in program titled "Countdown to College". This was broadcast on Nebraska Educational Television statewide. The program was for one hour and a panel of financial aid, college admissions and a current college student provided on camera answers to questions called in from across the state. Ten NeASFAA members manned the phones, taking down questions and providing answers. Two NeASFAA members were on the panel and eleven members helped host "Viewing Parties" at locations across the state. We received over 100 calls in the forty-minute call-in time period. Several members have volunteered to assist our three Educational Planning Centers on Saturday mornings in February. The number of parents/students utilizing the Planning Centers in February is very high as families are completing the FAFSA for 2001-2002. We are looking forward to our colleagues from Wyoming joining us at our Spring Conference in May in Gering Nebraska.