FLORENCE – The University of North Alabama Office of Student Financial Services announced that they will soon be rolling out a new scholarship management system from AcademicWorks.
Set to go live Dec. 1, Academic Works will allow students to be considered for all of the endowed scholarships available at UNA.
According to Shauna James, director of UNA Student Financial Services, students will simply fill out one general application for all endowed scholarships.
“The new system will automatically download information from our Banner system,” James said. “Using that information, students will answer a few questions and the system will then pull up a list of all the scholarships that student is qualified for,” she said.
Students must be admitted to UNA first before they will be able to use AcademicWorks.
In addition to providing more scholarship opportunities, the system will save time for both the student and faculty members.
“In the past, 800-900 students would apply,” James said. “We would then print the applications, sort them by hand into the different departments and then hand deliver the applications to the various departments for review and selection.”
James said that now the scholarship committees will be able to review and select the applications online. The same process will apply to the students, who will receive an online notification allowing them to review and accept the various scholarships they’re qualified for online.
“This will eliminate thousands of paper copies and it should speed up the process,” she said.
Additionally, the system will allow for more stewardship, as students will be able to submit a “thank you” letter directly to their donors through the system.
“The online capabilities offer so much,” James said. “Providing donors with acknowledgement is imperative to ensure we continue to receive endowed scholarships. Additionally, we think we’ll see a large increase in scholarship applicants due to how user-friendly the system is for our students,” she said.
James said that UNA currently offers over 200 different endowed scholarships, each with a different requirement.
“That’s why we’re encouraging everyone to use it; you never know what scholarship you might be eligible for,” she said.
For more information: Student Financial Services at 256-765-4278 or sfins@una.edu
For more information on AcademicWorks: https://una.academicworks.com/
Media Release/Bryan Rachal, APR
Director, Communications and Marketing
