What Do I Need in the Toolkit?

A Best Practices Model for Institutional Scholarship Management

Helen CarterAssociate Director, Student Financial Aid & Scholarships

Texas Tech University

Four Common Needs of a Scholarship Account Manager:

1. Need to know what accounts I have2. Need to know how much money I have to spend3. Need to choose the most eligible recipients4. Need to disburse the money within appropriate guidelines

How do I manage the four common needs efficiently?• Texas Tech University has a decentralized scholarship account

management model with over 200 scholarship account managers.• Texas Tech built the Scholarship Tracking System to be our scholarship

management tool!

Purpose of the Scholarship Tracking System• Show managers what accounts belong to them• Provide effective scholarship management tool to account managers campus-wide

• Leverage scholarship funds • Capture scholarship award history• Allow campus users to enter their own scholarship awards

• Provide methods for candidate search and review • Provide method for disbursing money within appropriate guidelines

• Federal aid regulations• NCAA compliance

• Provide central vehicle for campus users to access data outside of Banner security restrictions

How the Scholarship Tracking System Works

STS access granted to account managers;

validated through Banner HR/Banner

Finance

Account managers grant

access/permission to other staff

members

Awards entered on the STS by account managers or their

designees

Awards uploaded to Banner Student & integrated into

Financial Aid

Scholarships credit to student tuition; debit accounts in Banner Finance

1. Need to know what accounts I have

• How do I find out what accounts belong to me?• How is account responsibility designated?• How do I or others get access to my accounts?

How do I find out what accounts belong to me?• Sign on to STS• Only accounts

that I have access to show up on my list

How is account responsibility designated?• TTU assigns

unique Banner ORGN code to each account manager

How do I or others get access to my accounts?• STS security levels

are based on ORGN codes• Account mangers

can grant 3 levels of STS access to others

2. Need to know how much money I have to spend

• Where do I find: • Account balances

• Expenditures

• Account history

Where do I find account balances?

• STS imports Banner Finance FY budget, expense, and daily balance• Allows you to set

FY spending plan (even if others have access) using account award history, available funds, etc.

3. Need to choose the most eligible recipients

• What are the eligibility requirements of my scholarships? What did donors specify? • How accessible are these requirements to committees/users?

• How can I find students with donor-specified attributes? • Can I search out all of the required attributes?

• Do I need a scholarship application?

• How accessible is this data?

• How can the tools for searching out eligible candidates be available to everyone who needs them?

What are the eligibility requirements of the scholarship?• Scholarship

endowment records are stored in university imaging system or on-file in colleges and departments• STS provides a link to

imaging system

How can I find the most eligible students?• Committees

search for candidates by attributes required for specific scholarship accounts (need, high school, test score, etc.)

Choosing recipients….

• Committees review eligible candidate data• Committees

review best candidates’ imaged scholarship applications

Choosing recipients….

• Committees enter awards• Scholarship

awards are pushed to Banner every 30 minutes

4. Need to disburse the money within appropriate guidelines

• How can scholarships be integrated into existing aid package within federal guidelines?• What about NCAA compliance?

Integrating awards into existing aid packages…• Error list

shows reason why awards weren’t loaded to Banner• Manual

adjustments made to FA package

NCAA compliance…

• NCAA compliance team reviews athletic hold list, releases awards for disbursement based on Banner athlete codes.

Helen Carter, Texas Tech Universityhelen.carter@ttu.edu