In this month’s missive from a member of the University’s leadership team, Director of Financial Aid Ron Milliken ’75 reports on his department’s efforts to provide nearly all UMF students the financial support they need to keep a college education within reach.
Dear Alumni and Friends of UMF,
As a proud and grateful alumnus of the Class of 1975 and a UMF parent, it’s impossible for me to begin to pen this note for Farmington First as UMF’s director of student financial aid programs without first sharing with you the nostalgia and affection that I feel so deeply for so many Farmington students, families, faculty, staff, community members, and others who have been active contributors to the common good over the years.
Ron Milliken ’75, P’06, the University’s Director of Financial Aid, has more than 40 years of experience in the field of higher education financial aid and is the longest-serving director within the Maine Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
Ironically, it was four decades ago this month when I first matriculated at UMF as a transfer student with a bit of fire and ambition in my belly and brain — hungering to consume a curriculum of methods and liberal arts courses toward my goal of becoming an educator. Never did I imagine that, after starting a teaching career, I would soon return to UMF to work with Tony McLaughlin in Admissions, before becoming a college financial aid practitioner for many decades.
Financial aid has long been part of the mainstream of services and needs at UMF. Today, nearly 9 out of 10 UMF students are the direct beneficiaries of some form of financial aid from an annual aggregate total of approximately $25 million being coordinated from federal, state, institutional and private sources.
These aid programs reflect a spectrum of assistance. As ever, UMF alumni and friends whose generosity provides both need-based and non-need-based aid initiatives are vital to our efforts to offer students the support they need.
All of our aid programs — large and small — work in tandem to meet a vast array of needs for scholarships, grants, waivers, various loans, and student employment opportunities. On average, these resources are being juggled collectively to meet about 85% of the calculated financial needs of our students, half of whom are eligible for the Federal Pell Grant program that is targeted toward the nation’s neediest students. It’s a notable marker of UMF’s success that the graduation rate for our Pell Grant students is nearly equal to the overall graduation rate for all undergraduates.
As experiential education becomes an increasingly important part of the formula for student success, campus-based student employment opportunities awarded and coordinated by student aid programs have become a larger piece of the pie that comprises our work in financial aid. About half of the nearly 1,000 campus-based student jobs performed annually entail need-based aid work programs, from both need- and non-need-based funding sources.
Thanks to a significant new investment from anonymous donors, we are turning an important corner in advancing our capacity to help relieve the debt burdens of new students while increasing graduation rates with persistence scholarships.
And, with the help of an externally funded grant program, UMF is taking the lead in growing a low-cost, high-impact financial literacy initiative for college students. Through a peer education program, our students are being deployed to help their peers to take control of their financial destinies by becoming more savvy about financial decisions — another important step toward achieving student debt relief.
But I believe the real story and the true essence of the action in financial aid at UMF is at the individual student and family level, where my staff and I are continually humbled by witnessing the incredible dexterity, determination, and resilience that so many of our students display in pursuit of a UMF degree.
It’s been a privilege to send you these greetings as you prepare to sample some of the successes of UMF in this online issue of Farmington First.
My sincere best wishes,
Ron Milliken ’75, P’06
Director of Financial Aid