You will need to submit a budget in your application that lists the costs associated with your enrichment activity. Because it needs to be accurate and detailed, the budget will probably be the most time-consuming element of your application. Below is step by step guide through the process of creating a budget. If you have any questions regarding the preparation of your budget, please contact us.
Gather Information
The first step in creating a budget is to gather information related to the costs of your activity. Depending on the type of activity, these could include:
- Airfare, mileage, car rental, or other travel costs
- Room and board
- Registration fees
- Purchase of materials needed for an experiment
Documentation
For the application, you will need to provide documentation that clearly indicates the costs listed in your budget. Types of documentation could include mileage and per diem (per day) calculations for meals (current rates are available at travel.uconn.edu), receipts, conference and hotel booking confirmations, quotes for travel arrangements, a finances/budget sheet from the proposed study abroad/public service program, rental contracts, etc. Screenshots saved as PDFs will serve this purpose.
Please note that enrichment award funds support Presidential Scholars who are pursuing eligible enrichment activities. We cannot approve requests to use funds from this program to subsidize activities of individuals who are not Presidential Scholars. So, if your award includes funds for travel, and you plan to share a room, we can only approve requests for your portion of the room cost. The same holds true for meals and transportation.
Budget Worksheet
Once you have gathered all the information and documentation, the next step is to complete the Budget Worksheet in which you list all the costs associated with your activity. If your activity involves travel (not study abroad), we recommend that you complete the Travel Worksheet, which will calculate the travel expenses that you can enter into the Budget Worksheet.
Here is a sample Travel Worksheet for a professional development activity in Boston (a conference), which is 85 miles from Storrs. The conference runs from Wednesday evening through early Friday afternoon, and the student will be staying at a hotel nearby. The conference will be providing lunch on Thursday, but otherwise the student is on their own for meals. You can see the per diem calculation based on the rates for Boston in the bottom section of the worksheet (with a 75% reduction for Wednesday and Friday, the first and last days of travel).
Travel
If your activity is sponsored through the Office of Experiential Global Learning (EGL), please follow their instructions for making travel arrangements.
Any travel not sponsored by EGL must be documented using UConn’s Concur travel system. To do this, you must complete the following steps at least two weeks prior to your departure. Failure to do so could result in your funds being withheld.
- Set up your profile in Concur and designate Susan Ruggiero as a delegate, which permits her to prepare and submit your travel request in Concur. Step-by-step instructions for how to do this are available here.
- Complete this online form. It will ask you to describe your planned enrichment activities (i.e., conference presentation) and associated travel in 500 characters or less, as well as to provide confirmation of your travel dates, location(s), and mode(s) of transportation. You will click YES to the question about financial support from UConn sources. You must also provide emergency contact information. The information provided in this form will be used in the Concur travel request.
Please direct any questions about Concur to Susan Ruggiero at susan.ruggiero@uconn.edu.