Welcome

You may have noticed, there is a new person in our office. Chris Chen has taken Laura’s place and is quickly learning everything there is to know about her new position. If you are in our building, please stop by to meet Chris and to introduce yourself. This is the contact information for Chris: ychenn@gmu.edu, 3-8612.

Here is a trivia question in honor of Chris' home country: What important holiday is celebrated on December 25 in Taiwan?

Deadlines for Spring Upload, Fellowship, and Tuition Waiver

A friendly reminder for those who are responsible for spring assignments in BTS.

Spring Upload

Friday, January 2, 2009 - Adjuncts (including signed contracts)

Note: After those dates, the system will be locked and you will not be able to modify or enter more assignments through BTS. Please send the contracts to Chris Chen to ensure timely processing.

Friday, January 9, 2009 - Fellowship Acceptance Letters

If you have received letters and notifications from the Dean's Office for your department, please remind the students that the acceptance letters need to be signed and sent to Chris Chen.

Friday, January 9, 2009- Tuition Waiver Second Deadline

Should you need to make changes to the tuition waiver spreadsheets, please do so and send to Chris Chen. Please note that the students added after December 8, 2008 may receive a bill from the University. Their tuition waivers will be applied to their account at a later date.

Spring Upload Contest

Be sure not to miss the chance to participate in the Spring upload contest !!!! We will recognize the departments who went above and beyond to make the process of uploading the Spring 2009 assignments from BTS to Banner easier. The categories are the same as in the fall (below) and the winner in each category will receive a small token of appreciation!

• First to submit all Part-time Assignments to the Dean's Office
• First to submit all GA Contracts to the Dean's Office
• Lowest % of Mistakes (including mismatch information between contracts and the system, number of skeletons due by the upload deadlines and missing signatures)

Late EAs = Hardcopy EAs

HR has been very rigorous when dealing with late payroll transactions. If the effective start date of the transaction is earlier than the begin date of the current pay period, HR is now requesting that we submit hard copy EAs with an explanation/justification for the late submission. There are some problems related to submitting those late, for example: it raises the question if the payment is indeed due to the individual, there are tax implications when the payment is done as a lump sum, and it highlights the liability to have someone working for us and not getting paid for a few pay periods. Make sure to make use of reports in Discoverer or e-print to review labor charges to your org and certify that adjuncts, grad assistants and hourly employees are being paid correctly.

Contracts in BTS

The new feature seems to be a hit and some of you indicated that it saves lot of time! For those of you who are not aware of this new tool, here is a summary: after you enter your assignments in the system, you can select specific instructors or all in the list, click the "Contracts..." button on the top of the screen (by your org number) and BTS will create a Microsoft Word Document with the instructor's assignments. The contract generated from the system takes the instructor's address information from Banner by using the instructor's first name, last name and G#. If you are having problems generating the correct address, make sure that the individual's name in BTS matches the name in Banner.

Mary Roper Award

A reception to honor this year’s recipients of the Mary Roper Award was held on Monday, December 8 in the Center for the Arts. This award recognizes outstanding staff service and we were pleased to present it to two very deserving individuals: Jen Bernard and Barb Gomperts. We also recognized Annie Lonetti for Outstanding HR and Finance Support, Susan Ridley for Outstanding Administrative Support, Jennifer Hostler for Outstanding IT Support, and Susan Turriziani for Outstanding Graduate Program Support.

Winter Info Session - Save the date!

Plans for our CHSS winter information session are in the works. Please mark your calendar for Thursday, February 12, 2009. This will be an afternoon session from 1:30 pm – 4:30pm in Mason Hall D3.

Office Availability Before and After Winter Break

Please be advised that our office will experience some phone and internet outages immediately before and after the holiday break due to campus construction. As a result, we may be making alternate work arrangements and the office in College Hall C113 may not be open all days. If you have an urgent item requiring attention immediately before or after the break, email is the best way to reach us. Thanks for your patience and we promise to respond. We will keep you updated, especially after the break when graduate and adjunct assignments are being processed.

Answer to trivia question: Constitution Day (or the day their constitution was accepted in 1946)