Scholarship Administration

Rebecca Dempsey

Our Foundation currently oversees all aspects of the scholarship administration. We are moving the overall administration to the Schools on campus this summer. I need advice on how to set up the different schools - should there be a system administrator for each school? Or should I set up opportunity administrators based on scopes? I am just now starting the planning stages so we can move forward with this change, and I would love to talk to anyone who currently has their system set up by the schools/colleges.


Thank you,


Becca Dempsey

Andrew Maxwell

Hi Becca,


We have a decentralized scholarship system at our institution as well. All colleges and many departments administer "own" a set of scholarships, and are in charge of award selection, annual reporting, and periodic reconciliation. Our office controls system permissions and provides end user support for BAM. We have assigned a Data Steward in each college, usually at the Dean or Associate Dean level. We secure permission in writing from the Data Steward of that college each time a new staff member requests access to the system. We make it clear that scholarship admins will have access to student PII, opportunity/portfolio information for their college or department scope, and can make award selections from those opportunities. We also complete an audit each year where we generate a list of all admins within a scope and send it to the Data Steward for review. The Data Steward will sign off on admin access, or will tell us to remove their access (if they failed to do so previously). We also coordinate with our Registrar's Office to ensure that all new admins have current FERPA training on file. Happy to chat about this further if you have additional questions.


Best,

Andrew Maxwell

Virginia Tech

Russel Heskin

WesternU also uses a decentralized system like Andrew at Virginia Tech. Each college/program has one or two opportunity administrator(s) that manage all aspects of that college's/program's scope. Each college/program still must rely on system admins in Advancement and/or Financial Aid to create new portfolios and update communication templates, for example. System admins also set up University-wide standards, such as application periods (dates and deadlines) that coincide with Financial Aid's calendar. After colleges/programs select their recipients, all awards go through a review by system admins in both Advancement and Financial Aid before fund disbursement. I also maintain direct oversight of 10-12 University-wide scholarships. I'm happy to answer any further questions.


Russel Heskin
Senior Director of Stewardship and Special Projects, University Advancement
Western University of Health Sciences

Mallorie Fonseca

EIU also organizes access like this. Our Deans, scholarship chairs, or office managers have access as Opportunity Administrators. We had restricted access to 1-3 OA users per scope due to our first cycle management audit results finding far too many (but still manageable) amounts of admins. Separating colleges with scopes and allowing them OA access allows them to focus more on the awarding and reviewing while our Financial Aid office takes care of system processes (like cycle management, updating applications and deadlines, etc.) and our Development team handles the Stewardship side of things. I never thought about having colleges with system admin access, but you can't restrict system admin roles like you can opportunity admins, so that is something to consider. I think it might just depend on your school's structure and the amount of Opportunities you have. You don't want to have 'too many cooks in the kitchen' but there's only so much one office can do on their own!

Rebecca Dempsey

Do you have any how-to guides you used for your Opportunity Administrators? Would you be willing to share if you do?