Angela Van Dekker, assistant vice president of student financial services at Fordham University, was named to the board of trustees of the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC), by the state senate on June 26. HESC administers the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), guaranteed student loans and the College Savings program for students and families.
“I do feel it is an honor to be named. I am the one financial aid administrator on the board,” said Van Dekker, who came to the attention of HESC president James C. Ross as an advocate for students and a presenter at HESC. “Over the last four years student aid has sharply decreased—at Fordham we’ve lost between $800,000 and $900,000 in student work study funding, with no increase in Pell grants. I spend a lot of my time trying to find funding sources for financial aid.”
Van Dekker has worked at Fordham University for 23 years in a variety of financial aid positions. She graduated in 1963 from the University’s undergraduate School of Education (then located on Broadway in Lower Manhattan), received her master’s degree from the Graduate School of Education in 1964, and her M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business in 2001. She has held numerous positions in the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association and other statewide and national financial aid membership organizations, and serves on the advisory boards of several lending institutions. She also served on the 22nd Congressional Education Advisory Committee from 1989 to 2002.
HESC provides more grant and scholarship money to college students than any other state agency in the nation, guaranteeing more than $6 billion in new and consolidated student loans, and providing $875 million to more than 395,000 students through TAP last year. The senate confirmed four other members of the higher education community to HESC’s board in June, all of whom serve five-year terms.
