Scott Maichel is a principal and co-founder of AmCheck’s San Diego location. AmCheck started operating in 1996 and provides payroll/HR related software and services that help employers manage the employee life-cycle. Currently, AmCheck has 12 offices across the U.S. and is one of the largest privately held payroll services firms in the U.S. As far as his experience, Scott Maichel has over 25 years in the human resource sector. A true testament to his abilities is AmCheck’s San Diego location that he started in 2006. Although it began as nothing more than a one-bedroom project, Scott Maichel turned San Diego into the second largest revenue generating office in the company. One of the reasons why AmCheck gained some popularity recently comes from the fact that they have just established a high-value college scholarship program to support higher education.
Can you give us a brief background of the scholarship?
I recently established a partnership with Brandman University which is part of the Chapman University system. The goal was to create two college scholarship programs for our client’s employees.
What is the difference between the two opportunities?
The first scholarship program is available towards the “traditional” college experience where the learner has access to both online and classroom-based courses. This program has more structure where the learner must enroll in classes by a certain date and has regularly scheduled class times and exams. The scholarship is available towards undergraduate and graduate degrees in 50+ different majors. The financial reward ranges and goes up to $5,400 for undergraduate degrees and up to $8,960 for graduate degrees.
The “MyPath” scholarship program,” on the other hand, is geared more towards working adults. This program is 100% online and is a “learn at your own pace” format where the student can participate in courses and exams on their own timeframe. This is a great, flexible program for someone who wants to pursue furthering their education on a part-time basis.
The MyPath program is only available for bachelor’s degrees in business and information technology. However, those degrees are the two most popular undergraduate degrees in the U.S. The program also has an “opt out” component. Which means, based on a learners previous or current work experience, they can “test out” of certain coursework, thus potentially shortening the timeframe of achieving a 4-year degree to 3 – 1.5 years. This program is extremely affordable at $6,400 per year. The MyPath scholarship benefit is up to $640 per year.
What type of program are people looking at when they decide to join Brandman University?
The main reasons why Brandman is such a good fit for our clients is because of the wide scope of educational opportunities available, the flexibility and the price point. Brandman offers north of 50 different programs. Also, since we have clients in all 50 states, their online programs allow our clients access to this education opportunity regardless of where they are physically located. Lastly, Brandman’s online programs have been rated as one of the best in the nation since online college programs ratings began.
How did this idea originate?
We are always looking for ways to add value to our clients beyond the typical payroll vendor relationship. Providing them with a program of this nature helps our clients attract and retain good people by basically offering an additional benefit to their employees at no charge to our clients. The program also helps differentiate AmCheck as a thought leader in our industry.
Do you anticipate any additional opportunities of this nature in the future?
Absolutely. For example, we just recently expanded both scholarship opportunities to not only include our client’s employees, but now the program extends to employee’s spouses and dependents. In conjunction with our Brandman partnership, I’m confident we will continue to make the program even better for the future.
Do you have any advice for potential applicants?
The great thing about this program is it’s available to all our client’s employees, spouses, and dependents. It’s also available to all AmCheck employees, spouses, and dependents. If the applicant has been accepted by Brandman University, there is no application process for the learner to access the scholarship funds. We are very excited and proud of the scope and availability of this educational opportunity.
Scholarship programs are very helpful especially for students from lower income families. I wish more companies took such efforts to assist student(s) in various communities.