Financial Aid Awarding & Office Support
Financial aid optimizing is not one-size-fits all.
Neither is our approach to helping you with it.
The relationship between net price and enrollment likelihood is unique to every institution, and it changes by market segment and recruitment cycle. Effective awarding requires deep institutional data analysis, cross-cycle monitoring, and strategic refinement.
Best Practice Solutions develops awarding strategies through disciplined, institution-specific analysis, and partners with you across recruitment cycles to strengthen enrollment performance, optimize net tuition revenue, and support long-term institutional health.
“BPS will help you redefine the question to get to what you really need… That’s going to be transformational to the way you do business. We became much more proficient in Slate utilization, allowing us to make better decisions because we had faster availability to data in the moment.”
– Ned Jones
VP for Enrollment & Marketing, Siena University
Our Approch
ASSESS
Every engagement starts with a holistic assessment including a technical audit and staff interviews. What is the express challenge? What unexpressed challenge sits beneath it? What upstream processes are causing downstream issues?
DESIGN
We architect an approach fit to your institution’s unique context. We consider your staff capacity, enrollment operation, and enrollment goals. The right design prevents expensive rework and creates a system that can scale.
IMPLEMENT
Once the blueprint is set, we execute. Our expert practitioners bring deep experience managing enrollment operations inside institutions, ensuring every build reflects operational realities.
SUPPORT
Our post–go-live support blends technical stewardship with operational leadership. We’ll help you leverage Slate as your enrollment strategy evolves by refining builds, troubleshooting issues, improving data quality, and training staff.
Offerings
We support institutions across the full lifecycle of Slate Admissions and Student Success tools.
Slate Captain (Fractional Support): Gain an embedded partner who provides strategy, oversight, and hands-on management of your Slate instance—delivering more value and continuity than a full-time hire.
Slate Implementation
Slate Optimization
Slate Assessments
Slate Portal Development
Meet Your Slate Captains
Enrollment operations practitioners with technical Slate expertise
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William Mortimer
Bill is an enrollment management leader with recent posts as Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management at Assumption University and Director of Enrollment at Beloit College.
Bill has built data and analytics teams focused on predictive modeling, reporting, and financial aid leveraging, led admissions departments, oversaw complex enrollment operations, and developed full-cycle marketing strategies ranging from search to yield.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has recognized Bill’s expertise in CRM tools, and he has presented at numerous higher education conferences about his innovative work.
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Jess Brady
Jess has a great deal of experience in multiple types of CRM software, and a proven track record of successfully transitioning schools from one system to another. Most recently, Jess successfully migrated UW Whitewater’s graduate and undergraduate recruitment efforts from Ellucian Recruit to Technolutions Slate.
Jess is also very knowledgeable about FERPA guidelines and has vast experience developing and maintaining an institutional database to support recruitment efforts through event, form and query creation and management.
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April Cozine
April brings more than two decades of experience in higher education, with a proven track record of driving operational excellence across enrollment, admissions, and financial aid systems.
As the Director of Enrollment Operations at Marymount University, April led the management of two Slate CRM instances and streamlined both undergraduate and graduate admissions workflows. As Director of Operations and Systems at Wichita State University, April played a central role in the successful implementation of Slate.
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Melissa Dix
Melissa brings 25 years of professional experience in technology and marketing. She leverages CSS mastery to tailor mailings and craft responsive portal pages. She adeptly assists institutions in branding and customizing Slate instances, ensuring a quality user experience. Her adeptness extends to mobile responsiveness and site design, with tailored solutions designed within the Slate framework. Melissa's ability in these domains culminates in visually captivating and intuitive interfaces, maximizing the potential of Slate's features and functionalities.
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Jeremiah Wilson
Jeremiah brings more than 10 years of experience in business operations, project management, and online product management to the Best Practice Solutions team. Jeremiah has held several previous roles at institutions of higher education: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Connecticut, and Iowa State University in the Registrar’s Office and Student Affairs areas. Jeremiah is an expert at identifying inefficiencies, developing alignment strategies, and building the structure to support improvement and continued growth and progress. He has successfully managed the end-to-end development lifecycle in a variety of industries.
