Good afternoon,

I hope all is well! I am sending along the following instructions for anyone who processes Scholarship Disbursements. This new process was implemented back in March and I’m not sure if everyone received it or not, so I thought I should share. This new scholarship workflow process is smoother and cleaner, and displays the current status of scholarship disbursements you have processed for tracking purposes (e.g. if they have been awarded or if they are still in route).

You will need to follow the directions below to sign up for the ability to process disbursements going forward.

Please read the email and if you have any questions please feel free to contact Sara.Raffia@uconn.edu or me.

Thank you.

Have a good day,

Kathy

 

“Hello,

I apologize in advance for the lengthy email that follows!

New Scholarship Contact
I am happy to announce that the Office of Student Financial Aid Services has hired our Scholarship Programs Administrator, Sara Raffia! Sara joins our team from Goodwin College where she previously worked in financial aid and their alumni office. Sara will be your scholarship contact moving forward and can be reached at sara.raffia@uconn.edu or 860-486-6254. Because we are telecommuting the next three weeks until April 6, this number will not be available but we can be reached via email or Skype.

COVID-19 and Launch of New Scholarship Disbursement Process
As some of you may know, we have been working on an online scholarship disbursement form option for longer than we would like to admit! We are very excited to announce that we are rolling this out live, today, so that our essential functions can continue during this time. Ideally, we would have announced in the Daily Digest, set up in-person trainings, and notify all impacted parties prior to the rollout, but we do not have that luxury of time. Please find important information below (which will also be on our website before the end of today):

1. If you typically submit scholarship disbursement forms on behalf of your office/Department, please request access to the online form here
   1. This access request will be sent to your supervisor, as listed in Core-CT. Once your supervisor approves, you should have immediate access to the online form.
2. Once security is granted, you may access the online form here.
   1. While the form is built very similarly to the paper form, we’ve attached resources that you may find helpful.
   2. The access links and resources will also be available on our website by the end of today: https://financialaid.uconn.edu/faculty-and-staff/.
   3. The online form allows for bulk uploads of recipients by account number using a CSV file upload (sample is attached). Instructions and the template may be found in the Job Aids (attached) and the template may be found on our website.
3. Workflow
   1. Once you submit your scholarship disbursement form online, it will then be automatically sent for approval to either the Fiscal Officer listed on the KFS account or the Primary AND Secondary Signature Authority listed on the Foundation Account. The form will NOT make its way to financial aid for processing until the person listed as the approver approves the request.
      1. If you are the Fiscal Officer listed on an account AND are typically the one to submit the forms, please notify Sara Raffia and we will update the online system to then ask the Account Supervisor listed in KFS to approve the scholarship.
      2. Friendly reminder for Foundation accounts: if the disbursement or combined disbursement is over $10,000, then the Primary Signature Authority needs to approve the disbursement request.
   2. Because we are rolling this out so quickly, we ask you for your help in notifying those who have to approve the requests that they will start to receive email requests! If they feel they are bombarded with access requests, we suggest they set up a separate email folder and rule that automatically moves these emails into the separate folder.
4. Issues
   1. While we hope to not run into issues with the workflow, if you are unable to use it for some reason and need to process scholarship forms, please send your forms using the paper form via email to sara.raffia@uconn.edu. If you are unable to have the forms signed, we will accept unsigned forms during this time only due to the unprecedented nature of the situation. Once normal University operations resume, you will need to submit the completed and signed form to our office.

We thank you for your continued patience and flexibility these last few months as we experienced numerous vacancies in our office and now as we rollout a new process, all while telecommuting. Thank you and be safe!

Final Job Aids

csv.import

Carrie Fernandes
Associate Director – Compliance and Quality Assurance
Office of Student Financial Aid Services
233 Glenbrook Road, Unit 4116, Storrs, CT 06269
(P) 860-486-2558, (F) 860-486-6629
https://financialaid.uconn.edu/