I have been a functional lead for financial aid offices for the past seventeen years, and have been involved in HEUG for that same amount of time. I have over twenty-seven years of fulltime experience working for financial aid and student financials offices.
I am currently a system analyst and functional lead for the Financial Aid module of PeopleSoft at Brigham Young University. I have worked in this position for the past eleven years. Before that I was the Systems Manager and functional lead for the financial aid office at the University of Utah, and held that position for seven years. Before becoming a functional/technical analyst I had ten years of experience on the functional side, including Financial Aid Loan Program Manager (during which the University of Utah converted to PeopleSoft), Financial Aid Counselor, and Student Financials Loan Counselor. These assignments also included periods where I was assigned to review federal regulations and update training materials.
I have been active on the Financial Aid list-serve since I joined HEUG nine years ago. The first HEUG Conference I attended was in Atlanta in 2004, and I have attended every year since (except one year when my daughter was due within a week of the conference). I was on the Financial Aid PAG (PeopleSoft Advisory Group) for three years as a regular member, and one additional year as an associate member. During that time I was the Financial Aid assistant track chair one year, and then the track chair in 2006. More recently I am again serving on the Financial Aid Advisory Group, and have been an Assistant Chair, and am serving as the Chair from March 2019 to 2020. I have presented or co-presented sessions several years at the conference, my first presentation being on Equation Engine in March 2005 (the first session presented on equation engine that had not been done by Oracle).
When I first became acquainted with PeopleSoft during our implementation, I could see that there was great potential for it to become something far better than what we had been using at our institution. Yet after enrolling in the listserve and attending my first HEUG conference, I saw the pivotal importance of the HEUG organization for implementing continual improvements. What I love is that besides having the ear of managers and developers at Oracle, HEUG allows peers to meet and correspond, giving us opportunities to share best practices and interesting solutions. I have often remarked that the HEUG conference is the busiest and most learning-intensive conference I attend.