Ball State took another leap toward going green on Wednesday with the launch of the brand new MyBSU Web page.
The Web page, newly available to students, contains their financial aid information in one place. This allows easier and quicker access to information, and offers real-time solution to problems that students might be having.
"It's a whole self-service website for students," John McPherson, director of Scholarships and Financial Aid, said. "Registration will eventually be there, and if you want to view your account balance with the bursar's office, that will eventually be there, too."
The introduction of 24/7 online access to financial aid is the first step in a campus-wide initiative to give students constant access to all of their applications and information.
The system change had been discussed for sometime, McPherson said, and the university had a few options to choose from, but eventually chose to use a purchased system that would give the university benefits that they lacked with the current system.
"We had to evaluate, ‘should we build all of that?' or ‘can we go out and buy it?'" McPherson said. "That was the decision that was made — that it was going to be more efficient and more timely to go out and buy a campus-wide program than it was to actually build one."
Several other schools, including Purdue University and Ivy Tech, use the same system that Ball State is now utilizing.
One of the greatest advantages of the service will be the amount of real-time access students will have to their information that wasn't available as easily before.
Before the new system, students couldn't go in and actually monitor where they were in the process, McPherson said. The new system will be available to students 24/7 through a Web browser.
Another major aspect of the financial aid scene the program will affect is the amount of paper involved with the process.
The former process involved the staff sitting around for days, making sure award letters and required paperwork were being packaged and sent out to students as quickly as possible.
"The financial aid process really isn't changing that much," McPherson said. "The process is still going to be the same, the timeline will just be improved because we're not waiting on paper anymore."
Although McPherson is unsure of the amount of funds that might be saved with the new initiative, he said it's going to help the financial aid office tackle other more important issues.
"It'll free us up to do more critical things that we should be doing, rather than just processing financial aid," McPherson said.
McPherson said he and his staff are looking forward to the changes and hope the newly implemented system will be an advantage to students.
"We're starting to bring our technology up to speed with what people's demand is," he said.
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