An Open Letter to LSSU Concerned Students:

My name is Bill Eilola and I have recently joined the LSSU community in the role of Vice President for Enrollment Services. Here at LSSU, the Enrollment Services Division is comprised of the offices of Admissions, Financial Aid, Registrar, Orientation, and Retention and Advising. Prior to coming to LSSU, I spent time working in enrollment areas at Gannon University, Grand Valley State University, Walsh College and in private industry as a contractor to Ford Motor Company. 

My name is Joe Herbig and I am the Vice President for Finance.  My area of responsibility includes the Business Office which is responsible for the preparation and issuance of the student tuition bills.  I have been at LSSU for five years and have been an integral part of the Banner system implementation from the beginning.  I have seen the countless hours and the dedication that have been devoted to this tremendous task.

Recently, we came across a flier addressed to LSSU Students which details areas of concern related to enrollment, registration, financial aid and tuition billing statements. Unfortunately, the author speaks from the comfort of anonymity, making it difficult to initiate meaningful and useful dialogue on this topic with the goal of improving our process and service to students. Therefore, we are writing this as an open letter to students who may have experienced frustration with offices related to their enrollment and ideally to the author of this flier, whom we invite to contact us at either weilola@lssu.edu or at my campus extension of 2757 or jherbig@lssu.edu or my campus extension of 2216. 

We are the first to admit that there were difficulties surrounding the start-up of the Fall Semester. There were administrative errors made on some of the initial bills mailed to students and the conversion to our new administrative records system of Banner created problems with the awarding of financial aid for some others. We believe all members of the campus community can appreciate the magnitude of such a record system conversion once they have been given the opportunity to understand and learn about it. Conversions of this scale often take 3-5 years and require additional staffing. The effort made by LSSU staff has been truly admirable to move forward in rapid fashion, maintain office operations and has been done without increases in staffing to support the additional work-load. Were errors made? Yes. Will the process be improved? Absolutely.

To those students who had difficulty enrolling for classes; to those whose financial aid did not award and disburse accurately; to those whose tuition statements were either confusing or inaccurate; to those students whose excess aid checks were not available timely; we offer you two things: Our sincerest apologies and a promise of improvement.

Rest assured that discussions for improvement are already occurring. Continuously improving our service is vital to our offices. Offices in Enrollment Services together with the Business Office will be identifying processes to evaluate and improve. The goal is to Identify, Measure, Assess and Improve. Misinformed statements and personal attacks do not serve the quality improvement process. Open discussion does. We again invite you to contact us and perhaps even participate in a meeting with our office staff so that we can hear your concerns face-to-face in order to help us improve our service to you. Thanks for your time and consideration.

Bill Eilola						Joe Herbig
Vice President for Enrollment Services		Vice President for Finance
