Michigan State University has licensed and launched AcademicWorks as a complete scholarship and endowment management solution for the university.
This application, branded MSU Scholarships, will provide a secure, central location for all gift information, as well as other sources of student financial aid information for each unit.
Moving to an enterprise tool for all scholarships and endowments will help MSU keep up with growth, maintain data at a university level and track analytics to aid in decision making.
The MSU Office of Financial Aid and Office of Treasury and Financial Management lead this initiative with support from MSU IT.
Scholarships and endowments can be accessed for the following pilot units:
- College of Business (part of the college)
- College of Music
- College of Natural Science (part of the college)
- College of Veterinary Medicine
- Graduate School
- Honors College
- Office of Admissions
- University Advancement
Information about scholarships and endowments for the eight pilot units is available and searchable to anyone, but to apply, individuals need to log in with their MSU NetID and password.
MSU Scholarships aims to create one central place for students to search and apply to all MSU scholarships for which they be eligible, starting with a phased approach of pilot partner units.
Awarding and accessing scholarships varies by department. Currently, students have to identify and contact all schools or units in which they’re interested to inquire about scholarships for which they can apply.
“As student debt grows rapidly, not having a streamlined process for scholarship location and administration puts the burden on our students and many are missing out on valuable scholarships each year because of our fragmented process,” said Ryan Rademacher, assistant director of scholarship administration and stewardship for the Office of Financial Aid.
MSU Scholarships integrates into the offices of Admissions and Financial Aid, providing added visibility into their information along with new reporting capabilities.
The application is also capable of integrating student and financial system data to help eliminate manual redundancies and frequent cross-campus communications.
MSU has initiated a phased approach across campus over the next several years to add all scholarship and endowment data into the MSU Scholarships system for awarding and managing donor funds.
This will make it easier to search across the entire institution, maintain information in one place for all of MSU and collect more holistic metrics.
During the first phase of MSU Scholarships, project team members will be reaching out to unit administrators with instructions on how to be included in the next phase of the project.
For questions or to be part of the next phase of MSU Scholarships, contact Ryan Rademacher.
