Overview

The Ohio College Opportunity Grant (Institutional External Fund ID = OCOG) program provides grant money to Ohio (OH) residents who demonstrate the highest levels of financial need (as determined by the FAFSA), who are enrolled at Ohio Public University main campuses (not regional campuses or community colleges), Ohio private, nonprofit colleges or universities, and Ohio private, for-profit institutions.  

Background

Starting with Regent Award Release 4.4.0.0,  Regent Award is supporting automated awarding and disbursement of OCOG. Introducing automation into the state grant processing is expected to result in significant cost savings as well as increased awarding accuracy for schools.

The OCOG FAY begins with the Summer term and consists of the Summer, Fall, and Spring terms regardless of term dates.  The grant is always packaged using the latter FAY during the crossover Summer term, regardless of the FAY assigned to the term in Regent Award. The OCOG FAY ends with the Spring term. FAY for OCOG corresponds with Federal FAY, 7/1 - 6/30. The last day for FAY's Eligibility and Disbursement Query files changes from year to year. If there are outstanding OCOG disbursements at the end of the FAY, the school can request an extension for the term to re-open the window to request disbursements. Extensions must be approved by the state.

OCOG Eligibility

The following criteria are determined by Ohio State and are accounted for in the Ohio Eligibility Query:

• The most recent eligibility query determines eligible students for awarding current and future terms in the FAY
• Only students enrolled in specific programs at specific campuses are eligible for OCOG awards.
• Ohio residents in an undergraduate degree (associate or first Bachelor's) or nurse diploma program at an eligible Ohio or Pennsylvania institution are eligible
• Student's EFC (Expected Family Contribution) must be $2,190 or less
• A student must have a maximum household income of $96,000.
  • The field used to define household income is the FISAP Total Income (FTI) field from the ISIR.
• Students are limited to 10 FT semesters or 15 FT quarters (20 HT semesters or 30 HT quarters) of state, need-based grant aid (including a combination of OCOG and the Ohio Instructional Grant (OIG)).
• If a student becomes ineligible anytime in the school's academic year, the funds would need to be returned for all terms requested in that year.
  • If the student becomes ineligible on a subsequent Eligibility Query, Regent Award will cancel the award for all current and future terms in the FAY. 
    • Refunds for closed periods will be handled manually. Regent Award will notify schools when a student loses eligibility on a paid OCOG award in a closed term, and the school will manually adjust the affected awards. See 453312775.
  • If the student is no longer on the Eligibility Query and they were previously eligible, Regent will trigger a task and block future OCOG disbursements for the student. 

The following criteria should be configured:

1. In Fund Setup configure the following:

   1. Fund External ID value OCOG

   2. ‘Allow Auto-Adjustment of Paid Disbursements’ = No

   3. ‘Attempt to Keep Paid Disbursements Unchanged’ = Yes or Yes (Inherited)

   4. Select eligible programs in the Programs tab

   5. Status
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       Configure 'Cease Auto-Packaging Date' for future FAYs, to use dates in the past, to prevent automatically applying the fund configuration.
2. In Term Setup configure the following:

   1. Enter a ‘External Term Code' value starting with two characters that highlight the type of term, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter using the two-letter code (SP, SM, AU, WI), followed by the year of the term

      1. Example 'External Term Code’ values from Herzing:

         1. Spring 2023, SP2023

         2. Summer 2023, SM2023

         3. Fall 2023, AU2023

         4. Winter2023, WI2023

1. In Roles the following Permissions should be enables:

   1. Global Permissions → Process Permissions → Import Processes → Import State Grants

   2. Global Permissions → Export Student Transactions → Access Export Student Transactions

   3. Global Permissions → Export Student Transactions → Run EST for DRI

   4. Global Permissions → Export Student Transactions → Run Expected EST

   5. Global Permissions → Export Student Transactions → Run EST for AR

The Eligibility Query is available to schools in an Excel file format. The file must be converted to Comma-Separated Values (CSV UTF-8) format to be consumed by Regent Award. The file contains one record per student per file.  The standard file name is 1819_OCOG_Eligibility_Query_MM.DD.YYYY.csv, where 2018-2019 is FAY.  The following is OCOG Eligibility Query CSV File Format required by Regent:

Import Ohio State Grants - Eligibility Query Process 

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ImportProcess ImportProcess

To import the Ohio Eligibility Query via the UI, on the Processes menu → Import Process screen, select "Import State Grants" under the Process Type drop-down.  Select "Ohio" under the State drop-down, and select "Eligibility Query" under the File Type drop-down. Only users with the "Import State Grants" permission can access this process.

The students on the Eligibility Query will be matched to a student record in Regent Award using the Social Security Number (SSN) only. The match will only occur once the student’s ISIR is matched to the student in Regent Award, as all OCOG eligible students will have completed an ISIR.

Any attempt to run the Import State Grants - Eligibility Query process produces a Process Log entry. The entire file will fail the import and show an error on the Error  tab of the Process Log if:

• Invalid data format/file imported
• File name does not match the expected naming convention (required to determine the FAY)
• No records are parsed from the file
• FAY cannot be matched to a FAY in Regent Award

If the individual record fails to process, show error in the Error Message field of the Students tab.  An individual record will fail to process if there is a failure to match student.

Upon successful import of the file, one of the two Activity Log Entries is created for each student on the imported Eligibility Query:

• Imported on Ohio Eligibility Query as eligible with [remaining semesters].
• Imported on Ohio Eligibility Query as ineligible due to Error Message Codes [list of codes].

Reprocess

In order to match up the state-provided data that was loaded prior to students existing in Regent Award to the students once they exist, Import Ohio State Grants - Eligibility Query Reprocess was created.  This process reprocesses only the current and immediately prior FAY vs. all FAYs in the data. Here is how the FAYs are determined:

• If today's date is
  • 11/01/2017: 2016-2017 & 2017-2018 (FAYs 2017 & 2018)
  • 01/01/2018: 2017-2018 & 2018-2019 (FAYs 2018 & 2019)
  • 06/30/2018: 2017-2018 & 2018-2019 (FAYs 2018 & 2019)
• To allow for "early" and "late" files by FAY, the logic relates to the calendar year

Implementation Note: The school can either request Regent to auto-schedule this process as needed or the user can initiate this process via the UI at ad hoc by selecting Processes → Reprocess Process → Roster Award - Reprocess.

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This process also produces the Process Log and Activity Log entries described above.

FileWatcher - Ohio Eligibility Query

The Import Ohio State Grants - Eligibility Query process is also available via FileWatcher.

Folder Name	Process Type	FileWatcher Monitored	Description
StateGrantLoadOH	Import		Processed State Grant OH (Eligibility Query) files Files uploaded from the UI (where REM calls DEX to process them) Also, files that have processed via being loaded into the _FW folder
StateGrantLoadOH_FW	Import		State Grant OH (Eligibility Query) files processing Sync'd with sFTP Files typically only exist in this folder when they are processing

Remaining Eligibility

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The Remaining Eligibility field on the Eligibility Query is used to determine the student's remaining eligibility, in the number of semesters or quarters, or OCOG.  A given disbursement is not accounted for in the "Remaining Sems" value until its status is "Paid."  In other words, if the disbursement is in a "Scheduled" status in Regent Award, this semester has not been taken into consideration for determining the "Remaining Sems" value.  The remaining semesters on the Ohio Eligibility Query are updated at the same time that the Disbursement Query is loaded into the State's system.  The award must have been paid before the next eligibility query is received in order be excluded from the "Remaining Sems."

• For example, a student has 2.25 remaining semesters at the beginning of the Summer term.  The Summer term Three-Quarter Time (TQT) time award is paid on 08/03/2018.
  • The next eligibility query is imported on 8/8/2018 and reflects remaining semesters of 1.5 (.75 was subtracted from the remaining semesters due to the 3/4 time paid Summer award).  Had Summer not been paid, the eligibility query imported on 8/8/2018 would have reflected 2.25 semesters of eligibility.  

Counting Award Amounts Toward Remaining Eligibility

The portion of "remaining semester" that will be deducted from the student's remaining eligibility depends on the student's enrollment level in the term awarded.  For example:

Enrollment Level	The portion of Remaining Eligibility Per Term
Full Time (FT)	1
Three-Quarter Time (TQT)	.75
Half Time (HT)	.5
Quarter Time (QT)	.25

For example, a student has 2.25 remaining semesters at the beginning of the Summer term.  The Summer term awarded at an enrollment level of Three-Quarter Time (TQT).  The student's Fall and Spring terms are both Half Time.

Term	Portion Used	Remaining Eligibility
At the start of Summer		2.25
Summer (TQT)	.75	1.5
Fall (HT)	.5	1
Spring (HT)	.5	.5

Less than 1 Term of Lifetime Remaining Eligibility

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Lifetime Remaining Eligibility Lifetime Remaining Eligibility

The Remaining Semesters are indicated on the Eligibility Query in the "Remaining Sems" field.   The student is considered to have partial eligibility if the lifetime remaining eligibility is less than 1 term. Partial eligibility is then determined based on the lifetime remaining eligibility calculation.  If the lifetime remaining eligibility is:

• < 1 term but > 0.75, the enrollment level used in the comparison will be FT.  

• ≤ 0.75 but > 0.5, the enrollment level used in the comparison will be TQT 
• ≤ 0.5 but > 0.25, the enrollment level used the comparison will be HT.
• ≤ 0.25, the enrollment level used in the comparison will be QT.

For example, the Eligibility Query is received with the student's remaining eligibility of 0.67 semesters. The 0.67 semesters remaining is rounded up to 0.75 (TQT) for the student's lifetime remaining eligibility.

Students that have less than a full quarter or semester remaining may receive an award for less than the FT award amount (even if they're actually enrolled at a greater enrollment status).  Please note that this is separate from the student's enrollment level in Regent Award.  

Re-entries