Graduate Aid Redesign Project
Course 7 Meeting (02/09/2000)

Course 7: GARP Project Team Meeting Notes

Attendees:

1. Donna Bujno
2. Shawn Dunn
3. Maria Fernandez
4. Leo Larson

Agenda:

The meeting goal was to discuss the business process by which Course 7 decides and processes student funding in the form of FE, RA and TA.

Overview of Student Funding:

Biology student (Course 7) funding comes from 2 primary sources:

1. NIH Training Grants (Fellowships) à managed by the department
2. NIH Research Grants (Research Assistants) à managed by faculty

All 1^st year students and 75% of 2^nd year students are supported by NIH Training Grants. The NIH package distribution is based on a formula stipulated by MIT and NIH. When the formula is applied, it is typical for most students to have the same amount of funding charged to the same account (our packaging approach would work great).

If a student works on a laboratory for a Senior Professor, a departmental NIH Training Grant funds the student for his/her three years. During the 4^th year, student funding comes directly from the faculty member (typically from NIH Research Grant).

If a student works on a laboratory for a Junior Faculty, that student will be supported by an NIH Training Grant during the fist 4 years of study.

Business Process:

In order to manage Course 7’s business requirements, Donna Bujno is required to enter student award data on MITSIS and a File Maker Pro database:

1. Graduate Award entry on MITSIS
2. Graduate Award entry on departmental FileMaker database
3. Dacca (Payroll) information on FileMaker database (on a monthly basis to report variances vs. budget on a per student basis ***AND*** reconciling discrepancies between Payroll and MITSIS).

• The ability to enter Sponsor Information (such as whether the funding is coming from a training grant, research grant, other?) would be useful. Perhaps a "free form format" field would support this requirement. Course 15 and Course 18 could also benefit.
• One very good suggestion was to incorporate the tuition pro-ration table in our design. This would facilitate award terminations (TERM).
• PAYROLL IS A MAJOR CONCERN!!!!!!!!!!

1. There is no communication process when a SANDI change is made (at the very least, the Payroll System should have the ability to inform the individual that entered the original transaction). One possible approach would be to put some form of control that will only allow that department that entered the original transaction to enter or authorize the adjustment. When other departments enter adjustments, it is way too hard to manage the process.
2. Appointments are sometimes entered on MITSIS and Payroll differently complicating the matching process between both systems. I.e., MITSIS may have 2 separate awards for Fall and Spring…Payroll may have 1 award for both terms.

Date last modified: 2/9/2000 by the GARP Team