To: GradStar Users, University Business Managers
From: Aesha Greene, Office of Scholarships and Student Aid; Beverly Wyrick, The Graduate School
Starting today, new features have been added to GradStar for non-monetary/pre-paid awards and Cost of Attendance increase requests.
Training materials are being updated and will be available soon. A follow up communication will be sent once the materials are updated; however, you may start using these options in GradStar immediately.
For questions about the policy and impacts to student aid, please reach out to ssa_graduate@.unc.edu.
For questions about using these options in GradStar, please reach out to gradstar@unc.edu.
Non-Monetary/Pre-Paid Award payment option.
- This award type is used only to report values of non-monetary and pre-paid awards provided to students. Items such as gift cards, computers/tablets, giveaways, or payments made to outside providers on a student’s behalf should be reported in GradStar using this award type.
- Non-Monetary/Pre-Paid Awards will not pay against any outstanding charges on the student’s account since the award had already been provided to the student. As such, no chartfield string is assigned to this award type, only a department number.
- Use this award type for items purchased using other University systems (such as BuyCarolina or a departmental purchasing card).
**The Non-Monetary option appears just below the “comment” section, click the drop-down arrow to access the award entry section.
Cost of Attendance (COA) Increase Request.
The purpose of a COA increase is to accommodate required educational costs related to travel, research or internships not originally included in the financial aid COA. COA increases for student emergency payments and payments to students who require childcare for their dependent children are also permissible.
The following award types allow departments to request a financial aid COA increase:
- Travel (VSG)
- Training Grant Travel (TGT)
- Training Grant Dependent Care (TGD)
- Research-Internship (RIG)
- Emergency Payment (EMR)
**The COA increase appears to the right of the Department Award/Student Payment grid and will show for the above award types. Click the link and then complete the items in the pop-up window to confirm the COA increase request.