Data Stewardship
Financial Aid
1. Provide one sentence (or paragraph) that covers your area of responsibility.
Student Financial Services is responsible for the administration of approximately $150 million in federal, state, institutional and private funds in accordance with federal/state/donor compliance guidelines, institutional policies and the University’s mission. Student Financial Services assists in the development of financial aid award policy to strategically leverage finite dollars to meet the University’s enrollment management objectives.
2. What data systems do you rely on to meet those obligations?
Information retrieved from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application is maintained within Rebel Aid and EDE Express. Rebel Aid is a home grown financial aid delivery system unique to UNLV and EDE Express was developed by the Department of Education.
EDE Express is a software program created to hold FAFSA application information for schools. Rebel Aid and EDE Express have limited interface capability in terms of the information actually used within Rebel Aid. Income, assets and other data elements used to determine a family’s ability (or inability) to contribute toward college expenses are primarily maintained in EDE Express.
Rebel Aid is predominately used to process and determine financial aid eligibility for students. Rebel Aid draws in key demographic student information from SIS and basic information from EDE Express to assist with financial aid eligibility determination.
3. Are some of these external to the "core" systems
Access: Used to query the Rebel Aid and EDE Express databases to provide a variety of statistical information about financial aid recipients.
National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS): Developed by the Department of Education to review federal loan and Pell grant eligibility, loan default and federal repayment statuses of aid programs.
Common Origination and Disbursement (COD): An XML web-based program developed by the Department of Education to accept and reconcile (within Rebel Aid) federal Pell grants, federal loans, federal Academic Competitiveness Grants (ACG) and Federal Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grants (SMART).
XNet: A Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) program used to reconcile the state GEAR UP and Millennium Scholarship programs.
ELM Resources (ELMNet): A uniform data exchange network used to process private alternative loans from multiple sources who are members of the Mutual Benefit Corporation. A single point of data exchange is used to pool resources and streamline services for private alternative loan processing.
Advantage System: Reconcile the Rebel Aid system with Business Office accounting.
4. What data are entered and managed by other departments?
Student Financial Services relies on other departments to provide accurate student account or enrollment information within SIS: Examples: Registration and Records, Housing Office and academic units on campus.
National Student Clearinghouse enrollment verification is conducted through Registration and Records.
KE Ridgeway & Associates, National Credit Management and National Credit Service conduct University collections.
5. What data does your unit enter and manage that is unique?
Data entered into the described systems is unique to specific student financial aid account information and fund administration. Based upon FAFSA and SIS information, restrictions can be placed upon records to prevent unauthorized funds from disbursing to students' cashier accounts.