Scholarship Office urges prompt selection
of recipients, spells out submission policies
May 18, 2009
Now is the time to finalize the selection process for Fall 2009 student scholarships, says Dana Gautcher, scholarship coordinator and financial retention advocate.
Because of the volume of check requests, Accounting has requested a deadline of Friday, June 5, for submissions to be included on the initial fall semester billing. Submissions after June 5 could possibly lead to the scholarship not appearing on the students’ initial bills.
Every attempt will be made to apply scholarships to students’ Bursar accounts prior to the initial billing in July.
Things to remember:
- Check requests must include both the Z-ID number and the eight-digit student identification number. Check requests which do not include both numbers will be returned. SSNs are no longer required by the Student Financial Aid Office due to the new PeopleSoft Student Financial System. Per university practice, omit SSNs on check requests.
- Remain consistent with your past award schedule. If you provide the scholarship to the student in one payment, please indicate the semester or academic year to which it should be applied. Currently, a single lump sum cannot be divided among fall and spring. If you do wish to provide funds for both semesters, an individual check request should be done for each term.
- All scholarship and award requests must be made payable to NIU. The NIU Foundation no longer processes any check requests to be paid directly to students.
- All scholarships and awards will be routed through the Student Financial Aid Office and applied to the students’ Bursar accounts. Because of this, it is extremely important to make certain that your student will be enrolled at NIU during the semester of the award. If the student is not enrolled, the scholarship will not disburse.
- Make certain that students receiving the award realize that their scholarship was made possible by a donor’s generosity. Donors greatly appreciate hearing about the impact their gift is making. Arrange for the recipients to write thank-you letters to the donor. Thank-you letters should be addressed to the donor (donor information is available within each endowment’s guidelines or can be obtained by contacting the Development Office) and sent to Diane Johnson, Donor Relations, University Advancement, 138 Altgeld Hall. Donor Relations will forward the letters to the donors.
For general questions, contact Gautcher at (815) 753-4829 or via e-mail at dana@niu.edu. For questions pertaining to endowment and/or expendable fund availability, contact the NIU Foundation at (815) 753-7539 or via e-mail at foundation@niu.edu.
