Student Funding and the Funding Table
Entering funding and viewing all funding
Student funding tracking is the hardest thing for us to build to fit the context of many different programs, funding structures, granting agencies and so on. For now, we're keeping it simple. If you have needs that aren’t met by Prograds, just let us know!
Prograds has Department Funding Sources and Student-specific Funding Items (Employment and Funding)
What are Funding Sources?
Funding Sources are specified in the Department Profile. These really just become 'shortcuts' to populate student funding and then to allow Administrators to get reports by funding type. They look like this →
All you’re really doing when you use Funding Sources is to give yourself a standardized set of names and funding amounts that can be chosen when you create a new student funding item. Once you’ve put them into a student funding item, you can still edit those fields on that funding item.
The reason to have very standardized names is that in our Funding Table you can filter by funding name.
Funding Sources include awards, stipends, scholarships, employment (TA, RA, etc.), and research funding.
From the Department Profile Fuding Sources Tab, for each Funding Source you will specify its:
- name,
- source type (optional),
- default value (optional),
- maximum months (optional),
- and whether it is research or teaching.
We have provided some standard Source Types but we would appreciate users' suggested additions to the list.
Adding Funding for a Student
Adding Student Funding
A Student Funding item is added on a Student Progress Page or from the Funding Table. When a job (employment) or funding is added, you can select from the Funding Sources dropdown to populate some of the fields on that Funding record. They look like this →
Guaranteed Funding (G)
Most programs have funding guarantees along with the admission offer. Prograds Employment and Funding items have a Guaranteed indicator. When a student account is created, administrators can add funding items with dates and tick the Guaranteed indicator.
On the Student View and the Student Profile, a button pulls up a popup with a listing of the Student's guaranteed funding.
On the Employment and Funding lists on the Student Progress Page, guaranteed funding appears with (G) after the name of the funding.
Draft Funding Items: Published or Unpublished
Administrators have an additional field visible on the funding items and in the funding table: Published. When Published is off, the funding item will not be visible to the student. For Administrators, the item is visible in the Student Progress Page but with a dark grey background. You can Publish a funding item from the Student Progress Page or from the Funding Table.
Multiple-year Fuding
Funding items are limited to one year. This helps with totals and budgeting.
When you create a funding item, you can specify that it be duplicated for up to 5 years total. This will simply create that many annual copies, with the dates shifted ahead appropriately. All the fields will copy over.
But then, once those multiple, separate, annual items have been created, you can only interact with them separately. So, for example, if you change the amount on one, or add a file attachment to one of them, it will not show up on the others.
The Funding Table
Administrators have access to the Funding Table, a spreadsheet-like view of all the department’s funding.
The table loads with only funding that includes the current date, but you can turn this off and see all funding items by clicking the Clear Date Filter button.
There are many ways to filter the sheet to see funding items by: student, program, Funding Name, employment or funding, amount, date, and whether the funding is received, guaranteed, or published. All those filters compound so you can, for example, see only the published, employment funding for a given student for the current year.
At the bottom there is a total calculated on the rows shown in the table. So, for example, you can toggle published in the column header filter in the Published column to show the total of both published and unpublished items or show it without the unpublished items.
The little minus sign in the box below the column title for the yes/no fields (red x’s and green checks) will toggle between yes, no, and both.
You can also Add New funding from this page. When you click the Add New button you’ll get a popup similar to the one on the students’ progress pages, but here you’ll have to select the student, select whether it’s employment or funding, and choose published or not.
You can, for example, go from this:
To this:
Some other things you can do in this table:
- Most columns are resizeable and your browser will remember your column widths for next time. to resize a column go between columns in the header bar and you will get a little dragger to resize.
- You can move columns if you like. Drag and drop.
- Add or Edit notes. The Notes column is off to the right but you can keep it in view by resizing other columns
Student Funding Timeline View
Visible to Students and to Administrators, there is a Funding Timeline on the Student Progress Page and also on the Student Profile Page.
The timeline shows academic years and includes in each any funding whose start date falls in the academic funding year defined by the department in the Department Settings. Departments might choose to set their year starting in July (choose 7 in the settings) or in September (choose 9 in the settings), for example. Keep this in mind when you are creating funding items.
The total for that academic funding year appears in the box at the top right of each year.
You can’t interact with this yet, but soon you’ll be able to click on the items to edit them or add notes and attachments. For now, you have to do so by finding the item in the Funding list on the Student’s Progress Page.
