[Plsfaculty] [CATMAIL] Re: [Plantsci] Graduate Student Funding Plan Form

Thu Apr 11 09:06:29 MST 2024

Good morning,

The form is a tool for planning and budgeting to ensure students have been, are, and will be paid from correct accounts.  There are manual actions that have to take place to move the student’s salary to accounts.  There is no mechanism in ours UA Access systems that automatically does this once the information is received by HR or any other area.  There are also manual tasks that need to be completed when a student is paid by a scholarship from a corresponding UA Foundation account.  If the manual tasks of creating the various edocs are not completed in a timely manner, salary corrections must be made and other additional work has to be done to make the corrections.  This is an inefficient way of doing business with our student support funding.

Once we have a process in place to ensure that the business office knows where the funding is coming from and that the students are set up accordingly, we won’t need to look back to do corrections.  We can complete the  transactions in the various systems to make the changes or move funding as needed.  There is a limit of how far in advance you can set these changes up, generally not more than 3 months ahead.

I realize a four-year plan is a lot to project, a two year plan is more reasonable.  Nothing is set in stone and funding sources can be changed as needed per the instructions of the Director, yourself, and the committee.  But there should be a basic plan with the GRA expenses like there is with any other expense.

I am only trying to ensure that the spending is accurate while avoiding “clean up” work that has been the largest part of my job since coming into SPLS.   Dr. Brown, yourself and the other faculty need to make the decisions on how the students will be funded.  I can only advise if we have unrestricted funding to commit for subsidizing any amounts over what is allotted by the College and provided by scholarships and waivers.

I appreciate everyone’s passion and commitment to this issue and will do whatever is needed to support and assist.  I cannot properly do that without the information I am asking for.

Sincerely,

[The University of Arizona block 'A' logo.]
Leslie Bonilla
Manager, Finance and Administration
School of Plant Sciences
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Forbes, 303
1140 E South Campus Dr | TUCSON, AZ 85721
Office: 520-621-8689 |
lesliebonilla at .arizona.edu<mailto:lesliebonilla at .arizona.edu>
cals.arizona.edu/spls<https://cals.arizona.edu/spls>

[Integrity, Compassion, Exploration, Adaptation, Inclusion, Determination]<https://brand.arizona.edu/signature>

From: Mark A Beilstein <mbeilstein at arizona.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2024 4:44 PM
To: SPLS-BIZOFFICE <SPLS-BIZOFFICE at arizona.edu>
Cc: Bucksch, Alexander - (bucksch) <bucksch at arizona.edu>; plsfaculty at list.cals.arizona.edu
Subject: [CATMAIL] Re: [Plantsci] Graduate Student Funding Plan Form

Hi Leslie (and ID Brown),

I'm confused by the need for a four year funding plan. A four year funding plan is not a requirement of CALES. PhD students who enter our program are guaranteed support for five years in their offer letters and this support encompasses a variety of mechanisms over that time period (GTA, GRA, fellowships). The actual mechanism of support is designated in each student's contract issued by HR, and this occurs each semester. The form sent earlier today will burden faculty to provide undoubtedly inaccurate projections of future funding. A one year funding plan seems reasonable and is something we have provided in past years. More recently, the Graduate Coordinator has sent a form to all students and an advisory note to all faculty ~ 3-4 months prior to the start of each semester. The form asks students and advisors to discuss and report the funding mechanism they project for the upcoming semester. I would like the GC to send this form soon, however since I have yet to receive information about unit funds for instructional support, the form has not been sent. I have now sent multiple requests to discuss the topic of instructional support but have not received a reply from ID Brown except to request analyses I'd already provided.

On the topic of correcting salary errors, I don't see how projecting future funding for graduate students will address this issue. Obviously you need historical data and I have some of this data (AY 2024) which includes grant accounts for GRAs, TA assignments, and CALES funds used to support students. These spreadsheets live in our Grad Admin box folder. Moreover, I am willing to help identify additional historical data that predates my time as DGS if this will help solve the misallocation of salary to our unit IDC account.

I suggest we table this issue and discuss it at our upcoming faculty meeting so that we don't waste more of Leslie's valuable time by collecting likely irrelevant projections.

Best,
Mark

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 1:33 PM SPLS-BIZOFFICE <SPLS-BIZOFFICE at arizona.edu<mailto:SPLS-BIZOFFICE at arizona.edu>> wrote:
Hello,

I appreciate your response.  I am not sure how this information was documented processed or communicated to the business office in the past.  I know that I don’t have the information needed and am asking for your assistance in completing and submitting this form so that I do have current and accurate information.  I know that salaries have not been charged correctly in many cases due to various factors affecting the business office.  This is the simplest and fastest way that I can identify the salary errors and get them corrected prior to the beginning of FY25.

Going forward a process will be created and implemented to avoid future duplication of this effort.

Again, I appreciate everyone’s help and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Sincerely,

[The University of Arizona block 'A' logo.]
Leslie Bonilla
Manager, Finance and Administration
School of Plant Sciences
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Forbes, 303
1140 E South Campus Dr | TUCSON, AZ 85721
Office: 520-621-8689 |
lesliebonilla at .arizona.edu<mailto:lesliebonilla at .arizona.edu>
cals.arizona.edu/spls<https://cals.arizona.edu/spls>
[Integrity, Compassion, Exploration, Adaptation, Inclusion, Determination]<https://brand.arizona.edu/signature>

From: Bucksch, Alexander - (bucksch) <bucksch at arizona.edu<mailto:bucksch at arizona.edu>>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2024 1:10 PM
To: Bonilla, Leslie Anne - (lesliebonilla) <lesliebonilla at arizona.edu<mailto:lesliebonilla at arizona.edu>>
Cc: plantsci at list.cals.arizona.edu<mailto:plantsci at list.cals.arizona.edu>; SPLS-BIZOFFICE <SPLS-BIZOFFICE at arizona.edu<mailto:SPLS-BIZOFFICE at arizona.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Plantsci] Graduate Student Funding Plan Form

Hello Leslie,

we provided this information to DGS Monica Schmidt at the time I hired Will. I guess everyone else had to do the same and provided the funding scheme information when they hired their students.
The information is certainly already existent.

Best,
Alex

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

[cid:image003.png at 01DA8BED.70339670]

Dr. Alexander Bucksch
Associate Professor - School of Plant Sciences
BIO5 member
GIDP Faculty in Data Science & Statistics and Applied Mathematics

e: bucksch at arizona.edu<mailto:bucksch at arizona.edu>
w: http://www.computational-plant-science.org
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abucksch/

[cid:image004.jpg at 01DA8BED.70339670]

http://www.ipps8.org/

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the University strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.

On Apr 10, 2024, at 11:30 AM, Bonilla, Leslie Anne - (lesliebonilla) <lesliebonilla at arizona.edu<mailto:lesliebonilla at arizona.edu>> wrote:

Dr. Brown has requested that I send out the attached form to assist our office to accurately calculate projected expenses for Grad Student Funding.  This form is to be used for clarifying how Graduate Students will be paid over the course of their time in our unit.  Having a funding plan for Graduate Students is not just a policy of CALES, it’s imperative information that the SPLS business office needs to ensure accurate financial projections for accounts.  This form will also work as a tool to easily ensure that student’s salary is moved timely to the correct accounts, according to the funding plan, avoiding additional work caused by errors.

_______________________________________________
Plantsci mailing list
Plantsci at list.cals.arizona.edu<mailto:Plantsci at list.cals.arizona.edu>
https://list.cals.arizona.edu/mailman/listinfo/plantsci
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plsfaculty/attachments/20240411/3f4ed479/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 14173 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plsfaculty/attachments/20240411/3f4ed479/attachment-0003.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 24654 bytes
Desc: image002.png
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plsfaculty/attachments/20240411/3f4ed479/attachment-0004.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.png
Type: image/png
Size: 9761 bytes
Desc: image003.png
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plsfaculty/attachments/20240411/3f4ed479/attachment-0005.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 8946 bytes
Desc: image004.jpg
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plsfaculty/attachments/20240411/3f4ed479/attachment-0001.jpg>