Michael Collins Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Naperville, Illinois, United States

• As an individual contributor, served as Team Captain over 5 colleagues with responsibilities including:o Created scheduling strategy to optimize efficiency during each term to ensure work was completed within SLAs and best served students.o Served as Packaging SME for WIP reporting by compiling and auditing workload reported to upper management weekly. o Led weekly meeting to review workload and identify process improvements.o Prioritized and assigned weekly workload to team.o Performed QA of colleagues’ processing, presented results to management.o Mentored colleagues on our team’s processes.o Wrote and maintained procedure documentation for 15 processes to ensure excellence.• Led Team Captains meeting to identify, analyze, and track system issues; resulting in the formation of several escalated projects teams that executed corrective action plans.• SME of awarding institutional benefits, scholarships, agency billing, tuition assistance.• Served as sole expert on IL MAP grant, Federal military awards (Chapter 33 G.I. Bill, tuition assistance, VR&E, VRRAP).• Ensured accuracy of Pell grant, SEOG, Direct loans, PLUS and private loans.• Performed UAT and stress testing for cross-system integration and enhancements of ProSAM, Cognos, Banner, Perceptive Content systems.• Responsible for pulling and reviewing accounts, presenting findings for Title IV audits.• Department leader of New Aid Year rollout project, leading a matrix team of SMEs to coordinate new aid year tasks and ensure target dates are met.• Member of New Initiatives team to implement new scholarships and grants.• Designed and implemented process improvements that enhanced accuracy of Cognos/Banner reporting, automated awarding, improved timeliness, and reduced manual processing.• Executed work from other teams during peak processing: Salesforce cases, packaging adjustments, FSEOG reallocation, credit refunds.• Responsible for annual projection of awards for several thousand students.

Oak Brook, Il / Wood Dale, Il

• Responsible for re-integrating financial aid processing from ACS as lone graduate expert on four-person team.• Trained and mentored 10 colleagues on quality assurance processes and procedures.• Served as graduate packaging expert responsible for accurately awarding loans, scholarships and grants. • Managed escalations as the only resource on graduate packaging issues for 60 colleagues, managers, student advisors, campus directors, customer service liaisons, and the Solutions Center.• Identified, proposed, and implemented process for automating loan increase requests, resulting in reduced manual processing time and errors.• Identified, proposed, and implemented process for eliminating redundant steps in the awarding of Federal Pell grant, resulting in reduced processing time for my team and campus advisors.• Created new reporting approach to identify students with financial aid exceeding the cost of attendance, preventing Title IV violations and reducing the company audit risk.• Answered 50 RightNow tickets daily with detailed resolution explanations which reduced future ticket volume.• Created RightNow ticket quick reference guide to address the eight most frequently asked questions and distributed to 50+ campuses.• Streamlined the packaging of students transitioning from undergraduate to graduate studies within the same academic year, resulting in more accurate and timely receipt of financial aid for students.• Wrote communications on packaging policies and updates for distribution to other teams, executives, campus advisors and directors nationwide.• Created training on graduate packaging opportunities and delivered live to 30 regional campus advisors.• Conducted annual testing of budgeting and packaging functions of ProSAM automated system.• Received Information Mapping / FS Pro training for improved procedures, and subsequently trained my team to consistently utilize the methodology and software, including the creation of reference materials.

Oak Brook, Il

Award various forms of financial aid to post-secondary eduation studentsTrain new hiresCross-train other departmentsSpecialize in quality assurance

Oak Brook, Il

Mba, Marketing

with distinction

Ba, Sociology / Business Administration

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