2011 Business Meeting Report

2011 NEOA Annual ConferenceThe Power of Educational

Opportunity

Through NEOA membership with the New England Council, NEOA members have attended forums for Senators Susan Collins (ME), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Richard Blumenthal (CT), Congressmen Richard Neal (MA), and Mike Michaud (ME) within the last three months. The events are free for NEOA members to attend. (Thank you to those who have taken part.)

Created NEOA Board Google Docs account to electronically share and edit files and also to create an electronic NEOA Archive.

Four NEOA board meetings have been held and NEOA has been represented at the each state member conference; and the COE board meetings, conference and Policy Seminar. The final NEOA board meeting will be in June.

NEOA information and events have been shared through partnerships with the New England Association for College Admission Counseling (NEACAC), National Partnership for Educational Access (NPEA), New England Council, COE and member state associations. Information has also gone out to the First Year Experience Listserv

Formalizing directory of TRIO and GEAR Up programs of New England for NEOA members to facilitate collaboration and program referrals

Four New England SSS students have been selected for the COE 2011 Keith Sherin Global Leaders Program in Salamanca, Spain

We have over 221 people registered for the Facebook group

More activity this year on the Facebook group 28 rsvp’s for the Alumni Reception, plus guests Things are in the works for an alumni gathering this

spring before the summer

Secured $30,000 in cash sponsorships. Sponsors include:

• American Student Assistance • Lintilhac Foundation • Lumina Foundation • Massachusetts Educational Financing

Authority • Nellie Mae Education Foundation • New Hampshire Higher Education Assistance

Foundation • Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance

Authority • Rhode Island Student Loan Authority Implemented NEOA’s first online auction:

www.biddingforgood.com/neoa • 102 registered users • 89 items listed

Worked with conference committee on ADA requests for the annual conference.

  Working with Casey on the accessibility of the newly designed NEOA

website

Looking into closed captioning options for professional development  programming.

Reviewing and updating NEOA’s Fiscal Policies to bring into alignment with fiscal year and current practices

Revised COE Policy Seminar Reimbursement policy to provide greater reimbursement flexibility to NE states which send a state team to the annual Policy Seminar

Consistently monitoring the association’s fiscal status to ensure revenue and expenditures are on track and aligned with approved budget

Ensured that NEOA’s financial reserves are aligned with strategic plan

Oversaw Wainwright Bank’s transition to Eastern Bank, relation to ensuring all NEOA’s operations remained uninterrupted

We have 298 member applications. 222 paid members.

I am thrilled to report that is was another tremendous year for the NEOA

Achiever Committee. The NEOA Board or Directors was thrilled to introduce

the New Rising Star Award, identifying remerging professionals who are

former TRiO or GEAR UP alums and continue the tradition of the NEOA

Achiever. This year we had 10 nominations from Talent Search, Educational

Opportunity Centers, Upward Bound, Students Support Services, GEAR UP

and from the McNair program. I am also thrilled to report that although our

evaluators ranked our awardees unanimously – every individual was an

excellent candidate and I would encourage each program to nominate their

candidates again. Special thanks to our readers – Deb Johns, Associate Direct

of Admission at Yale; David Adams Senior Director of K-12 Services at the

College Board; Renee Kelly, Community Outreach Specialist, the Leahy Center

for Rural Students; Elizabeth Fontaine, Massachusetts Education Finance

Authority; Gaelyn Hastings, Massachusetts State Liaison and Project Director,

YOU Inc, Upward Bound programs; and Laurie Davis, Executive Director of

TRiO Programs at USM and Maine State Liaison. I am excited to introduce

you to some of the best alums that our programs have produced.

Participated in Annual COE Policy Seminar and assisted in supporting New England teams

Prepared board members and team leaders with information and training for Policy Seminar

Participated in several strategy sessions for working with key New England legislators

Prepared and disseminated two rounds of NEOA State Initiative grants and oversaw the grant process for the successful grantees

We did it!

The committee began working on updating the website. We brainstormed ideas for giving the website a facelift, including updating the content, adding new features, and thinking of ways for making the website a more useful resource for NEOA members.

The NEOA membership listserv has been moved from Vermont Technical College to the University of Maine (this actually took place during the 2009-2010 year, but the transition took place after the annual conference, so some people may not know about it). Also, three additional listservs were set up at UMaine - one for the NEOA Board of Directors, one for the Leadership Institute, and one for grant writing. The technology chair manages all four listservs.

The technology committee (and the entire board as a whole) discussed several ideas, policies, and procedures relating to the listserv. We are working on ways for making the listserv more useful for NEOA members, without overloading members with information that they already receive from other sources. We are also working on synchronizing the listserv subscriber list with our membership directory, and making sure that everyone who wants to be on the list is a subscriber (and those that don't are not). We also discussed ideas for reducing the amount of content that is not appropriate for the listserv.

We are continuing to look for ideas for streamlining our event planning, and providing online registration and payment procedures that are useful for members. This year, we are implementing an online conference evaluation (actually two evaluations - one for the overall conference, and one for the workshops). A paper evaluation will still be available for members who are unable to access the website during or immediately after the conference.

On February 24-25, TRIO Day 2011 hosted 680 students and staff of the educational opportunity programs of New England! TRIO Day provides a chance for individuals in TRIO, GEAR UP, and other educational opportunity programs, to network; learn about college opportunities and obstacles; and celebrate higher education!

Speakers included, RI Governor Lincoln Chafee, National TRIO Achiever Tyrone J. Flowers, Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, and RI Commissioner of Higher Education Ray M. Di Pasquale.

As part of the TRIO Day Service Project, students and staff donated cash and 352.35 lbs of food to the Westbay CAP Marketplace!

The event was featured in The Providence Journal and the Warwick Beacon and can be seen in the NEOA Pressroom.

The Rhode Island TRIO Day committee did a fantastic job! Next year TRIO Day 2012 is in Connecticut!