Community Spotlight: Meet Jean Wolfgang from Fox Valley Technical College
In Brief:
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We sat down with Jean Wolfgang, the student finance manager at Fox Valley Technical College, to discuss her role in helping students navigate their finances as young adults, how she juggles multiple duties on campus, and how Nelnet Campus Commerce helps balance the load.
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Meet Jean Wolfgang, Student Finance Manager at Fox Valley Technical College. With over ten years of experience in education and over two years at Fox Valley Technical College, she has plenty of first-hand experience helping students navigate paying for their education.
What do you love about working here at Fox Valley Technical College?
Education, especially as someone who has 10 years of experience in the field. In my role, I get to help students with that informal education component of being in college, which is how to be financially responsible, how to pay your bills, how to check your email, how to respond to people, and how to make your decisions and get yourself going on a solid financial path. Our institution offers a lot of services to help students make good financial decisions, like a financial wellness center and a financial resource center.
Sometimes, the first real bill a young adult will pay is their tuition bill, so it’s exciting to guide them through that.
How big is your team, and how many students are you serving per year with your team?
We have probably 8 to 10,000 program students active at any given time, and we usually have about 40,000 active accounts, so that could be people continuing their education with us or apprenticeship programs that go through us. The National Criminal Justice Training Center belongs to Fox Valley Technical College. We also serve five counties and all residents of those counties, providing community classes. Ten years old to 100 years old, you can be our student.
From your perspective, what is the biggest challenge that you’re facing in your current role?
The amount of work and the challenges we had with sponsor contracts. We have somewhere around 4,500 employers and organizations that sponsor students, and they have other nonprofits for sponsoring employees to get job training and things of that nature. It is very time consuming to move that AR from student AR to sponsor AR, get invoices out, collect payments, all of that.There seems to be the challenge of not having good financial literacy. They don’t sign up for direct deposit. They get a check. They don’t know what they have to do. They think the check magically goes to their bank account. They don’t understand banking, and the conversation is odd until you have the realization of what they don’t understand. Then you can explain it to them.
Which Nelnet Campus Commerce solutions does your institution currently use?
We have Cashiering, Payment Plans, Refunds, Storefront, and Cloud Connector for our integrations.
And how do you measure your experience with us?
The least amount of student questions, the better. So, if you have a product in which students are constantly confused, can’t log in, can’t do this, can’t do that, and there’s constant customer interaction because of confusion, that needs to be avoided. We saw a decrease in our phone calls once we switched to Nelnet. So, the platform, I think, is user-friendly. Student-friendly.
Would you recommend Nelnet Campus Commerce to your peers at other institutions?
Overall, my experience with Nelnet has been positive, and I noticed that Nelnet will respond to my complaints. I’m not shy about telling you what I think, and there always seems to be consideration of what I share. And then, oftentimes, there will be some changes.
Going back to my first implementation with Nelnet, which would have been many years ago, I had a project manager that wasn’t a good fit. I remember calling on a Sunday night like, “This is not working for me. What are we going to do?” You guys switched out our project manager and we ended up finishing way ahead of schedule. So, we went from being behind to being ahead instantly. I’ve complained, you guys responded, and we’ve gotten good results.
What advice would you give to other institutions looking to adopt solutions like those offered by Nelnet Campus Commerce?
Ask a lot of questions. When you look at implementation strategy, make sure you have the right people on the ERP side of things, whether it’s internal IT or consultants getting the right people. The implementation team can make or break it. In our case, I think our team was phenomenal for implementation. We had some top-notch people — being a little bit newer to the college — and that’s where I got to really know mine. There was really some stellar talent there.
How has it been being part of The Nelnet Quad? Has it enhanced your experience with Nelnet Campus Commerce, or are there some things you would want to have?
We’re all in something new, and it’s nice just to see the questions and the answers, just looking at the chats and the threads. It’s nice to know that you’re not alone and that we’re all having similar challenges.
How do you think the Quad community can evolve to better support professionals like you?
I think there’s just this real hunger for getting to know each other and just hearing how people are handling some of the challenges, like what path they took and what the results of that path were.
What challenges are you facing on a day -to-day basis?
As an expert in higher education payment technology we understand the number of questions student finance managers like Jean Wolfgang, can get in a day.
Want to be featured in our next Community Spotlight?
We’d love to hear your NCC story! Reach out to us to share how our solutions have helped your institution or learn more about how Nelnet Campus Commerce can help your institution simplify student financial services.
Author: Nelnet Campus Commerce
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