President's Message
By Jim F. Lane, Texas Tech University

As we race towards the Holidays and the season to share time with our families and friends, I want to thank all of you for your dedicated work and tireless efforts to assist the students of Texas. We know that we do this work because it is a calling and that the emotional rewards far outnumber the monetary rewards. No price can be placed on the feeling that we get when that student, which you have so skillfully worked with for the last 4, 5, or 6 years, comes into your office with the card and the announcement that they are graduating. Ours is a profession of dedication, commitment and sometimes great sacrifice to serve the parents and students of Texas and I thank every one of you for that service.

We are anticipating that TASFAA will have a wonderful year. Already, we have implemented the use of credit cards in our business practices and are extremely encouraged to the fact that this will help both the members and the lender partners of TASFAA. Also, we will begin this year with a new membership slot on the board. The membership approved the constitutional amendment adding a member to represent associate members, and as a result I have asked ATLE to provide recommendations for a person to sit on this position until the next election. Phillip Wambsganss, President of ATLE has recommended Mr. Adam Gonzalez from COSTEP to sit in this position and I have accepted that appointment. Adam is currently the President Elect of ATLE and will bring great insight to our meetings. His appointment will allow us to fully develop the procedures for the nomination of the Associate Member and to have a strong slate of candidates.

Dana Akins, Conference Chair for the 2005 conference is hard at work at making this years conference even better than the last. By starting early on her planning and fact finding, you will find that the El Paso conference will be both educational and enjoyable. The facilities in El Paso are fantastic and the location of the Conference Center could not be better, next door to the conference hotel. Stay tuned to this channel for updates.

In January the Texas Legislature will return to Austin and as you all know, money is the driving force. In order to educate the Legislative members and their staffers, we are planning on presenting more training sessions on the process of financial aid. These sessions, in cooperation with ICUT, have been extremely helpful and are being requested by our elected officials. The Higher Education community will be in a pitched battle for scarce resources and we must be ready to react to any and all requests from our elected officials. In anticipation of the legislative session, the Financial Aid Steering Committee has met again to forward recommendations to the legislature on the efficient and economical use of the financial aid funds. Our top request is to fully fund existing programs and not create new programs. We will just have to wait and see how existing programs will fare and if any new programs will pull resources.

Finally, I want to say that I believe TASFAA is at a crossroads. I have never seen such demand on our members by outside organizations for training, testimony and consultation. We have become an organization that is sought after for guidance and this is where we wanted to be. We now need to seriously look at how we can serve these demands with an all volunteer organization. I believe that we are rapidly approaching the point where we will need to have an established office and an employee to staff that office. This is the challenge. Many questions arise from this situation: how will we fund it, where will it be, what type of employee will we have and when can we do it? These questions and many more will be seriously addressed and will be brought to the membership over the next year. We are moving towards a position where we can financially endow funds to support such an office and we will be consulting our financial planner for estimates and recommendations on how to proceed.

Well, as you can see, this will be a busy and rewarding year for us all. Have a wonderful holiday season, keep in your hearts thoughts for our colleagues that are ill or in need and return safe next year.