East Mississippi CC garners 2021 ACE Award honors

East Mississippi Community College has been named a 2021 BankMobile Disbursements ACE (Achieve Campus Efficiency) Award recipient, which recog- nizes colleges and universities that deliver financial aid and other credit balances to students securely and efficiently. 

EMCC is among 194 higher ed- ucation institutions nationwide to receive the ACE Award. Criteria for the award requires that more than 90 percent of student re- funds from Jan. 1 to Nov. 1 were disbursed electronically and that 40 percent of all students, regard- less of financial aid eligibility, com- pleted the refund selection process. 

During that time frame, EMCC disbursed more than $7 million to students, with a disbursement rate of 95.2 percent. About 45 percent of eligible students self- selected their refund means. Those numbers are up from the previous year when approxi- mately 38 percent of students 

opted for self-selection of refunds and 90.5 percent of the $5.6 mil- lion disbursed was done so elec- tronically. 

“I want to applaud the entire Business Office team,” EMCC Chief Financial Officer Tammie Holmes said. “They have openly embraced efficiency improve- ments in our area, and this is evi- dent in these statistics.” 

BankMobile Disbursements is a technology solution powered by BMTX that processes and dis- burses student financial aid credit balances on behalf of college and university administrations in com- pliance with federal regulations, according to the company’s web- site. 

Money to be disbursed to stu- dents through grant funds, finan- cial aid or other reasons, such as when they drop a class, are sent to the BankMobile Disbursements platform, which provides students options on how they would like to receive the money, including an FDIC-insured checking account available to every student. Text 

alerts are sent to students notifying them of the status of their refunds. 

Holmes said the goal when implementing the BankMobile Disbursements platform was to make the refund process easy and convenient for students. 

“To be announced as an ACE Award re- cipient underscores the fact that we are doing the right things and we are going in the right direction,” Holmes said.