Financial Aid System Administrator

**Schedule**
8:30 AM - 4:30 PM

**Education Level**
Bachelor's degree in a relevant field.

**Career Level**
3 years of relevant experience.

**Department Description**

The Office of the Registrar provides a number of services to both prospective and current students and is the primary information source on enrolment, convocation ceremonies and important student dates and events throughout the year. We are a smart, collaborative group of approximately 100, spread across 8 departments: Student Services, Aid & Awards, Student Recruitment, Undergraduate Admissions, Student Records & Systems, Scheduling & Examinations, Student Communications and Central RO Administration. This supportive and dynamic team works together to provide assistance to students from their initial recruitment contact with McMaster until they graduate.

**General Description**

**Project Description**

The Aid & Awards department connects students with government financial aid, bursaries, work programs and scholarships. These resources help make post-secondary education more accessible and recognize students' academic, extracurricular and community achievements. We are currently recruiting a Financial Aid System Administrator

**Representative Duties & Responsibilities**
- Complete system rollover processes to set up new aid years.
- Accountable for the configuration and maintenance of delivered and customized configuration tables such as OSAP cost code tables, cost code pattern tables, USER table configuration, message text, translate values, early award categories and award values, checklists, comments, communications.
- Configure complex item types with strict adherence to coding structures and smart numbering as new sources of financial aid (e.g. trust funds, research, operating dollars) become available.
- Deactivate item types no longer in use.
- Generate, distribute and gather templates to collect fiscal balances for all sources of financial aid. Validate format/correctness/completeness of data and load to system on an annual basis to set fiscal spending limits.
- Create, validate and complete complex University and Government file loads and extracts using batch processes, templates, staging tables, validation reports, etc.
- Use queries, processes, and/or manipulation of spreadsheets to assist others with award and bursary aid assignment/allocations from operating and trust funds.
- Develop and maintain an Excel template that collects aid administrator input and uses multiple formulas to calculate a standard need score for a student. The standard need score identifies a student’s level of financial need and is used University-wide to ensure need-based aid is equitably distributed.
- Create technical/user documentation and develop operational plans and schedules to ensure that all processing for all aid administrators is carried out in a way that ensures standards and data integrity is maintained.
- Schedule and/or run batch jobs such as aid authorizations and disbursements; transcript notations; student communications, etc. Monitor the status of batch processes and follow up with aid administrators to advise of results. Take corrective action and/or direct appropriate corrective actions to remedy errors.
- Plan and co-ordinate a variety of events, such as workshops for financial aid administrators, user group meetings, training for committee members, system requirements gathering sessions and student focus groups.
- on-one office visits.
- Liaise with UTS on systems-related issues. Create and maintain procedural and technical documentation for reporting, tracking, and troubleshooting financial aid system problems.
- Evaluate data query requests from aid administrators, assess feasibility and requirements to fulfill the requests. Plans and writes complex queries from multiple tables (with results generated in various formats), executes and validates query results. Promotes to public use as appropriate.
- Manage the security permission list and role authorization processes. Follow up with users to ensure security is granted/removed as expected.
- Track suggestions for system improvements from all users to ensure requests are evaluated, fleshed out, prioritized and logged.
- Understand complex business processes of aid administrators University-wide and identify barriers to successful use of financial aid components. Develop and implement best practices to support aid administrators and seek ways to improve system functionality, performance and efficiency to ensure it meets the business needs of the University community.
- Develop and conduct peer reviews of business requirements to ensure that user requirement specifications are correctly interpreted.
- Develop test cases and implementation plans for new/revised business processes and/or system enhancements/changes.
- Remain current with frequent updates and changes to relevant technology.
- Evaluate student transcripts, student records data (e.g. program/plan/level/load), admiss