By: Brittney Payette
The Student Accounts Office and the Financial Aid office at Cameron work together to handle financial matters for the students.
Cameron’s Controller and Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Amanda Koll said her job is to oversee the business office and Cameron’s financial operations as a whole.
“I report to the Vice-President for Business and Finance,” she said. “Student accounts is a separate office, but they’re under the business office. But, the Business Office, the Office of Financial Assistance, the Office of Student Accounts, we all work very closely together when it comes to students and general student accounts.”
Koll said that the Student Account Office can assist students with a variety of questions and issues, not just refunds.
“Student account payments, they can take payments there,” she said. “General student account questions, if students have questions about their bills, their account charges, payments on their accounts, students can also reach out to them for like 1098 tax information and just the form itself. Student ID cards, parking permits and lots of other things.”
Financial Assistance Director Caryn Pacheco said she oversees both the Financial Aid and the Veterans Affairs office. Recently, there was an issue with Bankmobile.
“Technology is wonderful when it works,” Pacheco said. “Sometimes, technology does not work the way we want it to. Basically, there is a … connection from BankMobile’s system to an on-campus server that runs different programs and just do to the nature of the high security that’s involved in transmitting funds to and from BankMobile and Cameron systems, there have to be, obviously, very secure and identical security protocols in place.”
Pacheco said, right before the refunds were about to be sent to BankMobile, BankMobile did an automatic installation of new protocols, which caused Cameron’s on-campus server to completely crash.
“Our IT department had to completely rebuild our server,” she said.
Koll said IT helped the Student Accounts Office fully restore services by rebuilding the server from a previous backup. In order to still securely release the funds to BankMobile Monday morning instead of delaying, they had to find a workaround.
“This was a very unusual occurrence,” Koll said. “IT has put processes in place to hopefully prevent it from happening again.”
Pacheco said Cameron’s partnership with BankMobile started in 2008.
“We partner with them to allow more convenient options for students to get their refund,” she said. “Students have options to set up a checking account with BankMobile and get their refund that way, they can do direct deposit to their bank account … and then they can also choose to get a refund by check. So, it just allows a secure and more convenient way for students to get their refund.”
Pacheco said disbursements to student’s business accounts start after the last day to add and drop classes.
“We disburse twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays,” she said. “For the first couple of months after that.”
She said that the Office of Financial Assistance disburses funds after the Student Accounts Office receives the funds, which can come in different forms such as tribal checks and scholarships.
“We work closely with the Business office on disbursement days,” Pacheco said. “Once we know that we have all the correct information passed on to the student accounts, we let Amanda know and then they start working on the files.”
Koll said that every student has a bill on their Business Office account, which is sometimes referred to as a student account.
“It’s just where you have all the charges for the semester or anything owed to the university for prior semesters too,” she said. “That’s like housing, tuition and fees, books, if you’re charging through the bookstore.”
Koll said students should keep in mind that they may be due a disbursement, but not a refund.
“A refund is only generated for a student if their financial aid disbursements and total payments on their account are more than the applicable charges,” she said.
Students can view their account information and financial award information in the my info tab in Aggie Access.
For more information, contact the Student Accounts office at studentaccounts@cameron.edu or the Office of Financial assistance at financialaid@cameron.edu