Per Student Award and Financial Aid (SAFA) website:
The term "award" is a general designation applied to any scholarship, prize, medal, fellowship, or grant of money assigned to a student. Within this designation, awards are further defined as follows:
- Scholarships are based primarily on outstanding academic merit (80% or greater) or excellence in a specific subject or group of subjects.
- Bursaries are based primarily on financial need.
- Awards are based on a combination of criteria such as academic performance, leadership or involvement in extracurricular activities or student affairs at the university or in the community, work-related experience, athletic achievement or participation, or work-term performance, and may include a financial need component.
Submission process
- Donor Gift Agreements are created and signed by several areas on campus, including an academic department head (normally a chair and/or dean), a senior Advancement officer (e.g., AVP Advancement Services), the donor, and SAFA.
- Award descriptions are stipulated in the Donor Gift Agreement; the descriptions are created through a collaborative process between the faculty development officer, central Advancement, and SAFA.
- There are occasionally non-donor award descriptions, and these are created through consultation between an academic department and SAFA.
- Award descriptions and details for all new undergraduate scholarships, bursaries, awards, etc. are then submitted to Senate Undergraduate Council, for information, by the Office of the Registrar. This generally occurs three to four times a year.