While most think of the academic year as running from September through May, UNH offers many summer programs and courses. In summer 2019, the UNH Financial Aid Office requested a web interface through which students could apply for summer term financial aid.
Webcat is a UNH web-based application that allows students to, among other things, view course schedules, register for courses, view grades and check financial aid information.
In FY20, Enterprise Technology & Services (ET&S) engaged in a project with the Financial Aid Office to create a self-service webpage in Webcat. Once students submit an application, it initiates a workflow that notifies the Financial Aid Office an application is ready for review. This project has helped expedite the student financial award process for the summer term and improves the user experience by taking away the manual processing time previously associated with the process.
Prior to any ET&S involvement, the summer financial aid application process involved a manual, paper-based system where the student needed to complete two forms — one for work-study and a second for loans — and physically return them to the Financial Aid office. This slow process was prone to incomplete or bad data provided by the student.
The UNH summer financial aid workflow process project also combined the requests for summer aid and work-study into a single process, which provides a better service to the students.
ET&S also built a workflow that captures the data collected and automates the process for awarding aid to students, reducing the overall effort and time for the financial aid staff.
