Name of Responsible Individual: Jeremy Shreve, Vice President of Business & Finance.
Corrective Action: The University recognized that while the two students who were not issued refunds timely were unique situations, there needs to be better checks and balances in place to ensure all credit balances are properly refunded to students within the 14-day required period.
One of the late refunds was caused due to untimely posting of financial aid awards in the student accounts office, as it was not within a traditional awarding window. In response to this concern, the Director of Student Accounts will more frequently post financial aid awards on sudent accounts, once a week at a minimum.
The other late refund was caused by a student who did not properly set up their eRefund, which caused the payment to not be issued properly through the bank. To address this issue, the Director of Student Accounts is working with the IT department to create a reporting mechanism to identify what students are proprly signed up for eRefunds and cross-check them against the eRefund payment list before sending. This will identify any student not properly set up for the eRefund. Additionally, the Controller's office has a reconciliation process wherein any eRefund that is not issued from the bank properly should be identified. Unfortunately, this reconcilation process has not been performed frequently enough to catch all instances. The Controller's office has changed that to be performed on a weekly basis to ensure all instances are caught in time to be rectified before the 14-day period is over.
Anticipated Completion Date: 1/31/2024.