Student Resource Awareness Fair to connect students with financial opportunities

Illinois State University’s Student Government Association will be hosting its first Student Resource Awareness Fair 11 a.m. March 22 at the Bone Student Center. The fair aims to educate students on available financial resources and where their money is going.

Kerem Tasdan, the SGA secretary of college affordability, is an organizer of the fair. He spoke about how he originally wanted the fair to be focused on scholarships.

“We sort of shifted the whole event to be quite broader, to be about financial awareness and specifically student resource awareness,” Tasdan said. “The idea in mind was to promote what we already pay into and promote what’s already here for us on campus as students.”

In his first few years of attending ISU, Tasdan realized that campus departments and offices were funded by university housing dollars.

“We can’t utilize resources that are here if we don’t know about them,” Tasdan said.

Many organizations will participate in the Financial Awareness Fair, including ISU’s Financial Aid Office, Milner Library, the Center for Civic Engagement, the Julia N. Visor Academic Center and more.

“The Financial Aid Office does a variety of FAFSA workshops and helps connect students with scholarships,” Tasdan said.

“Milner Library has a lot of textbook initiatives like free e-books. In general, the Center for Civic Engagement does a lot to connect students with off-campus resources, specifically for their alternative break programs which are pretty popular," Tasdan continued. 

The Dean of Students Office will also be in attendance to showcase a new student navigator program, which will help students with housing and food insecurity.

Organizing with all of the departments was anything but easy. Tasdan spoke about the difficulties of putting everything together for the fair.

“One of my favorite parts and also one of the biggest challenges was trying to meet with these various offices and departments to … plan this event as a whole,” Tasdan said.

In the end, Tasdan simply hopes that students can find the event helpful in any way.

“If even one student is able to walk away from the event more willing to be involved, utilize resources or do better academically, that’s the big goal,” Tasdan said.