A piece of campus history, these engraved armrests (pictured left) will be made available for purchase by Northrop Auditorium until May 29. This opportunity is being offered exclusively by Northrop and the armrests will never be sold in stores. Armrests can be purchased for $25. Contact Sue Van Voorhis if you’re interested.
One Stop is making additions to their service model in an effort to continue to meet the changing needs of students, parents, faculty and staff by providing additional community support to ensure student success. One Stop Counselors will be prepared to engage and interact with students concerning their financial lives and success, and issues concerning degree progress goals.
One Stop counselors have developed curriculum, advising standards, and learning outcomes for one-on-one financial wellness counseling sessions with students. These counseling sessions are designed to empower students to examine their financial lives, and realize the impact that financial education can have on student success measures, such as academic degree progress and timely graduation. All One Stop Counselors are now required to have their certification as a Personal Financial Manager.
Additionally, One Stop Counselors will work collaboratively with the UMN Student Degree Progress Team, collegiate staff, and faculty to engage current and former students on their degree progress goals by developing success plans that will assist the institution with increasing retention and graduation goals.
$42.6 million was disbursed to students during the 2014-15 aid year through PeopleSoft and tracked with the Scholarship Tracking and Reporting (STAR) database, an overall increase of $20.2 million, or 47%, since the database was introduced in 2011-12. The STAR database tracks all scholarships and fellowships paid to students, no matter the funding source. Over 5,800 funding sources are managed by the STAR database.
As Sue mentioned during the ASR Spring Staff event on May 20, volunteers are needed to review the current Performance Appraisal forms and rating scale. ASR Staff are encouraged to volunteer and offer their own recommendations and suggestions. This process will need to occur over summer before getting final approval from the appropriate committee.
Turning on the payment plan option for students is not as simple as it seems on the surface. There no switch that gets flipped on or off each term, and, like much in life, there are many processes and decisions that need to happen before making these options available to students.
So, how does it work?
Before anything else, the Board of Regents need to set and approve tuition rates. If all goes as planned, the Regents approve tuition rates during their June meeting. However, this presumes that the Minnesota State Legislature has already determined the University's state allocation. The Regents can’t set tuition rates before this allocation is determined, because tuition rate increases (or freezes) are tied directly to legislative decisions.
After the rates are set it takes three to four weeks for Student Finance - Information Technology to set up tuition and fees in PeopleSoft and another week to test whether or not it's working correctly. Behind the scenes, the Office of Student Finance (OSF) implements multiple payment plans for students with the hope that eventually the best single-plan option can be selected. You can imagine the impact to students if this information is incorrect or not properly working. Once the PeopleSoft tuition and fees are verified, OSF can begin to run tuition calculations for students who have enrolled for the upcoming term. After the tuition calculations have run, the delivered version of PeopleSoft's payment plan can be 'turned on' allowing students to select and enroll in the payment plan.
However, OSF wants to avoid unnecessarily assessing students the $20 enrollment fee if their financial aid would cover all of their tuition and fees. For that reason, it's important that the payment plan not be available for students until after the first major financial aid disbursement date. This is especially true this term, because this is the first time students aren’t automatically enrolled in the payment plan option and need to proactively enroll themselves.
So, when will students be able to enroll in the payment plan? Aid is disbursed to students approximately 10 days before the start of the semester, so the payment plan will become available in the very short window between disbursement and the start of the semester.
Now you know!
The two-day meeting was an opportunity for all system campus Student Records staff to meet in person and discuss issues related to the Upgrade, better understand the OTR structure at the individual campuses, look at the function of this group post-Upgrade, and find opportunities for collaboration across campuses. The group will continue to meet weekly and provide an open forum for cross-module participation.
All campuses of the University of Minnesota are compliant with Section 702 of Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 (“Choice Act”). In-state tuition will be extended to spouses and dependents of veterans and active duty servicemembers who are using transferred Veterans Administration education benefits and are attending school within three years of the servicemembers' last period of active duty service.
The Parent Program provided honor cords to graduating student veterans, current servicemembers and ROTC cadets for spring semester. University Veterans Services on the Twin Cities campus piloted distribution of the cords by asking students to complete an exit survey if they wanted to wear an honor cord during their commencement ceremony.
As part of the planning following the employee engagement survey, ASR would like to improve its employee engagement, particularly on professional development opportunities. The following articles and related exercise can help employees begin to prepare for a project that ASR is planning to help address and improve engagement. So, take this opportunity to reflect on your career goals and perform a personal SWOT at MindTools.com.
IT@UMN specialists are testing new versions of operating system software, including OS X and Windows, to ensure a consistent experience for all who use the WiFi and Data Networks. Once specialists understand the impact of an operating system update, they will announce any persistent issues to the IT@UMN community.
The University of Minnesota is considering a realignment for supporting postbaccalaureate education. Generally the proposal works to align programs into either a traditional graduate education community or a professional degree program community. You can view the details of the proposed alternative structure on the UMN Academic Affairs and Provost website. Senior Vice Provost Karen Hanson is encouraging faculty and staff to send feedback on the proposal to provost@umn.edu.
This spring ASR staff event is Wednesday, May 20. The event will be held in Bruininks Hall and features keynote speaker Leslie Schiff, Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of Microbiology, and Associate Dean for the University Curriculum. Sue Van Voorhis, Associate Vice Provost, and Director of Academic Support Resources, will provide an update on ASR.
Attendees will be able to choose from many breakout session possibilities before enjoying lunch provided by Nelson’s Deli. See all event information »
Please respond to the Google Calendar invitation sent to all ASR staff.
Miguel Morales, a VA work-study student employed in University Veterans Services, filmed a PSA for Twin Cities Public Television on April 14 in the University Veterans Services office. The series of PSAs are about how Veterans can continue to serve while they’re not wearing their uniform.
Live Like a Student and One Stop Student Services are piloting 1:1 meetings with students to talk about financial literacy at the University of Minnesota. These sessions are designed around the needs of the specific student and can be requested through One Stop. Typical topics for these meetings include creating a spending plan, living like a student while in college, preparing for financial decisions post college life, making major purchases, credit scores, and more. These meetings are part of LLAS and One Stop's contribution to the RAoS initiative at the University of Minnesota.
The ASR communications team has produced new ASR word-marked slides and templates available with unit-specific versions. If you don’t see your unit or have other questions or requests, please contact Sarah Hollerich on the Communications team. View the presentation templates on the ASR intranet »
Overall post-Upgrade go-live activities are proceeding as planned. Many of the centralized meetings that were scheduled in the months building up to the Upgrade are beginning to wind down. ASR-IT staff will continue to work to resolve issues and use the Sunday maintenance window to make high-priority fixes, such as:
Tina has agreed to serve as interim director of the Office of Student Finance and will transition into that position over the next two weeks. Stacey Tidball will be stepping in as the interim director of continuity and compliance. It’s expected that these interim position will last for 3-5 months while ASR prepares and conducts a national search for a permanent OSF director.
