Five SUNY Jamestown Community College students recently received the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award for completing 300 hours of service to the college’s FAFSA Completion Corps. The award comes with a stipend of nearly $1,500 for each student.
JCC’s FAFSA team started in January as part of the State University of New York’s initiative to help prospective students complete the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid form. SUNY received a $300,000 grant from AmeriCorps to hire dozens of student FAFSA team members on six of its campuses across the state.
JCC’s team includes students Summer Jones, of Gowanda; Saige Pierre, of Jamestown; Cy Powley, of Warren Pennsylvania; Marissa Snyder, of Clymer; and Paige Zybert, of Cassadaga. They are led by Shannon Rinow, JCC’s FAFSA Completion Corps project coordinator.
Jones is studying Nursing, Pierre and Powley English, Snyder Human Services, and Zybert Digital Audio Production.
Members of JCC’s team complete training, research and participate in outreach opportunities, promote FAFSA completion awareness to students and prospective students, and provide personal support to FAFSA applicants, including helping them complete the form, answering questions, and referring them to other resources.
“Our FAFSA team has made 697 student contacts through community outreach, phone calls and individual appointments,” Rinow said. “They contacted 342 students to complete the FAFSA application before the fall semester, and 135 completed it thanks to their efforts. That’s a 39% completion rate for our calling project.”
Due in part to successes like these, the AmeriCorps grant at JCC was extended to continue throughout the 2024-2025 academic year until Aug. 31.