Federal Updates

Economic stimulus bill finalized
Congress reached agreement on a final version of H.R.1, the new economic stimulus bill. President Obama is expected to sign the bill this week.

Questions about Income-Based Repayment? Don't miss this important webinar!
Many members of the financial aid community have heard by now that a new repayment option, Income-Based Repayment (IBR), will be available to both current and new FFELP and Direct Loan borrowers as of July 1, 2009. But are you unsure how IBR works or what the associated terminology means?

E-ANN includes reminder of deadline to execute MLSA
ED released Electronic Announcement (E-ANN) #48, which reminds lenders of the March 31, 2009, deadline for executing the 2008-09 Master Loan Sale Agreement (MLSA) if they wish to sell 2008-09 FFELP loans to ED under the Loan Purchase Commitment Program (put program) available through the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act (ECASLA).

TG Updates

Get the training advantage: Register for the 2009 TG Annual Training Conference
Each year, TG hosts a training conference on industry issues that draws hundreds of attendees and earns high marks for content. If you're looking for more return on your training investment, consider the varied menu of the 2009 TG Annual Training conference, which will feature sessions on the latest legislative developments (including the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act (ECASLA)), workshops on financial literacy, and seminars to help sharpen your professional skills.

TG to host Student Success Symposia
TG offers a series of workshops for community colleges, independent colleges, and public universities interested in improving student persistence and success. These workshops, or Student Success Symposia, will focus on various enrollment factors.

From R2T4 to customer service, TG offers spring training to suit your needs
This spring conference season, TG will participate at a variety of conference events designed to sharpen your knowledge on financial aid and give you a fresh perspective on work. Over the coming months, TG will offer sessions at conferences in West Virginia, Kansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and other places.

This, That, and the Other...

TG's college and career-planning Web site, Adventures In Education (AIE™), offers students a robust scholarship search engine with information on more than 10,000 scholarships with a combined value of more than $7 billion. Visitors to the site can access this information quickly through various search options. Using the "Quick Search" option, AIE visitors enter relevant keywords and then choose the type of search to run — by an exact phrase, by all words in the description, or by any word in the description. Using the "Advanced Search" button, users can tailor a query according to a set of criteria specified on various selection tabs, including Me, My Place, My School, My Interests, and My Jobs. The results page for a query present a variety of key information about scholarships, including award amounts, deadlines, contact information, the number of awards offered, and the type of award.

To try out AIE's Scholarship Search for yourself, visit www.AIE.org/scholarships. To explore the entire site, visit AIE at www.AIE.org.