Community Spotlight: Meet Mariana Diaz From Stevens Institute of Technology
In Brief:
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We sat down with Mariana Diaz, Senior Director of Student Accounts and Auxiliary Services at Stevens Institute of Technology, to discuss her institution’s challenges and how Nelnet Campus Commerce helped solve them through Billing and Payments, Payment Plans, and Payment Forms.
Blog Post
For many schools, finding the right partner for streamlined payment processes can be daunting, but for Stevens Institute of Technology, Nelnet Campus Commerce has been the one to give them the tools to tackle the challenges that may come from their unique needs.
We sat down with Mariana Diaz, Senior Director of Student Accounts and Auxiliary Services at Stevens Institute of Technology, to discuss her role, her institution’s needs, and how Nelnet Campus Commerce helped their financial processes move at their pace.
How long have you been with Stevens Institute of Technology, and why do you love it?
I have been at Stevens Institute of Technology since January 2022. However, I have been working in higher ed for the past 20 plus years.
[I have] a passion for being able to help people through an exciting journey in college. We are all eager to earn a degree. It gives me the best of both worlds because my background is in accounting and administration, so I was able to do both: help people and utilize my knowledge in my business background.
What makes Stevens Institute of Technology unique?
Stevens Institute of Technology has a very unique student body. Most institutions’ student bodies are mainly undergraduates, and they have a small group of graduate and doctoral students. However, Stevens Institute of Technology has something that is very unique in higher ed and for our state: a large international student population.
What about your team? How big is your team, and what do your day-to-day responsibilities look like?
Student Accounts doesn’t just take care of payments; we ensure that charges are assessed and correct. Students don’t see [assessments and corrections], so we have to ensure that our tuition is based on what has been approved by the board of trustees.
We also ensure that the different systems are connected. Our system of record is Workday, and we ensure that Workday works smoothly with Nelnet so that students can make payments or parents can give them access to make payments on their behalf.
There’s so much that we do to cater to our students. [We] process student refunds if a student has a loan or scholarship and makes an overpayment, and we process 1098Ts—a credit to claim once you complete your taxes if you make out-of-pocket payments. We also work with the bookstore to provide book vouchers to students who have extra funds in their financial aid package so they can purchase their books through the institution’s bookstore. We also work with third-party vendors who sponsor students so that we can bill them for tuition payments.
What is the biggest challenge that your team faces?
Affordability is always one of the biggest challenges. When I came to Stevens [Institute of Technology], our international students had very few payment options to our institution, and didn’t have [access to] payment plans unless they had a U.S. bank account. Working with Nelnet, they are now able to enroll in a monthly payment plan and process payments using their currency of choice. We are very happy with our partnership with Nelnet to provide more options to our international student population.
What are some Nelnet products your institution uses, and when did your institution start using Nelnet products?
We use Nelnet Billing and Payments to pay our tuition fees. We also use forms to collect payments from different activities around campus. If the athletic department has a game and they’re charging [for] the tickets to come and see the game, Payment Forms is one of the platforms we use to collect those funds. I’m hoping that we can use the cashier module in the near future.
Do you think the Nelnet Campus Commerce team provides you with a customized experience?
Nelnet’s customer service is incredible. If we have any issues, we just send an email, and they respond right away. Prior to Stevens [Institute of Technology], the institution that I was working at for 16 years used a different payment gateway, but every time we had an issue, we needed to do our own research to figure it out. It's something I need as a manager, as a leader, and as somebody who needs to ensure we provide excellent customer service to our students.
Nelnet is our number one partner in that sense because if we have any issues or inquiries, we know that they'll respond to us within the same day. It’s something that is needed to ensure a successful partnership and be able to keep growing and building a better partnership so we can streamline our processes. I’m always looking to streamline and automate things, and I feel like Nelnet allows us to make sure we have a better business process for some of our services.
When I came in, there were no certain things that we should do this way and that. Payment plans, for example, were only [taken out] on the first of every month. I suggested that we give students the option [to pay] on the 15th because we were having a lot of issues with our students having to push [payments] to another day. That turned out to be very successful for us, and I’m glad you guys listened and allowed us to do that.
Why do you feel confident recommending Nelnet to your peers?
In my experience with previous systems, if I wanted to be innovative, it would take months of paperwork and emails. However, with Nelnet, I just had to send one email to my beautiful people and let them know this is what I want, and they're setting up a meeting for implementation right away. That type of customer service is essential for leaders like me. Being able to speak to a human being, let them know my ideas, and being able to execute those in a timely fashion [has been great].
What advice would you share with institutions who are looking to adopt new payment solutions on their campus?
Ask questions because with Nelnet, your questions are being heard [and answered] 95% of the time, and the other 5% is because they are trying to do research and find out if it can be done right. So, I will say, ask questions, be open-minded, and allow them to grab your hand because they’ll be able to guide you through that journey.
Want to be featured in our next Community Spotlight?
We’d love to hear your Nelnet Campus Commerce 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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