Inputting Program Data

Before inputting program data:

• Program leads should enter information on any activities they carried out during the reporting year to meet program requirements and/or achieve program goals. The new reporting process requires programs to report the cost of providing that activity and information on the students served by each activity. They must also connect each activity to specific Vision 2030 goals.
• Before entering activities, please review the main and subcategory descriptions in the Activity Categories and Subcategories Descriptions article. You will need to choose a main and subcategory for each activity, so it is important to understand the options available in order to choose the most appropriate for a given activity. This page also provides information on which of the category/subcategory combinations will require the submission of student-level data. Each program lead has a program-specific manual that outlines the categories and subcategories to be used for common activities reported for their program. 
• If an activity falls into one of the five high-level categories, that is where it must be reported.
• Programs will also enter the total annual cost of providing each activity. Programs should think broadly about what it costs each year to provide specific services including staffing, supplies and materials, training, etc. The Chancellor’s Office expects these to be educated estimates as colleges and programs develop processes for determining the cost of specific activities across their campus during the reporting year.
  
  • Example: One college’s Disabled Students Programs and Services (DSPS) program asked the VAR project team how they should calculate the cost of providing student transportation on campus (via a golf cart, for example). Should the annual cost include the staff member’s entire salary or should they just calculate the percentage of the staff member’s time actually providing that service? The project team determined that, because the staff person was hired to do that work and had to be on call in order to appropriately serve DSPS students when needed, then their entire salary and benefits should be considered in the cost along with any other costs incurred by providing the activity.
    
•  Over the first few years of VAR, the Chancellor’s Office will be collecting information and feedback from the field on how programs are calculating these specific costs. They will use this information to advise programs of best practices via technical assistance and other support.
• Previously, VAR required programs to break out costs by the seven 1000-level budget codes currently used by many programs. As of June 21, 2024, disaggregation of cost by budget code is no longer required.
  • There is an additional category called “Misc. Program Support Costs”—if a program activity does not fit into one of the first 5 categories, it can be reported here. Most activities should fall into one of the first 5 high-level activity categories and not the program support category but this will vary by program and will be addressed in the program-specific manuals. This spending will still be broken out by object code but will not require student-level data.

Select the Programs option on the left side panel to access the Program List Page:

A.  Program List: Toggle between Your Programs, All Programs, and Unavailable Programs.

B.  Edit Icon: Click to open the Program Details page to add activities. The progress of each program will show as:

• red = Not Started
• yellow = In Progress
• blue = Completed 

C.  Complete button: Move the program to the completed status or re-open a completed program. 

D.  Vision Goal Summary Table: Toggle between the Program List and Vision Goal Summary Table.

For detailed assistance with inputting program data, proceed to the Entering Activities article.