Beginning today, Wednesday, Nov. 1, Motlow State Community College will provide students with a consolidated platform for accessing the majority of the college’s instutitional and Foundation scholarships through the online scholarship management system called AcademicWorks. 

Founded in 2010 and based in Austin, Texas, AcademicWorks is the largest provider of scholarship management solutions in the world with nearly 600 higher education institutions and foundations as clients, including several fellow community colleges in Tennessee. 

“The AcademicWorks online platform is going to vastly improve the scholarship application and award experience for our students,” said Lane Yoder, Executive Director of the Motlow College Foundation.  “Presently, for many of the scholarships available to students through the Foundation, students have to read the critiera for each of the more than 30 scholarships to try to figure out which ones they are eligible to potentially receive, and then print a hardcopy of the application and complete it by hand. The current process for the student is arduous and confusing.”

 With AcademicWorks, the student will complete one general application for most all of the college’s available scholarships, and using imported data from Motlow’s information system, AcademicWorks will match students to the scholarships for which they are eligible based on the designated criteria,” added Yoder.  “For the numerous institutional scholarships, the current process by which students are matched is a manual sorting process through Motlow’s financial aid department.”

By matching students automatically to potential scholarships, AcademicWorks will create great efficiencies and improve productivity for Motlow staff as well.  The new system will also help ensure fund utilization, as well as provide the opportunity to highlight donors and their stories.  The purchase of AcademicWorks was made possible through a gift from the Motlow College Foundation to the college. 

“We are grateful to the Board of Trustees for the Motlow College Foundation for recognizing the tremendous potential to improve the scholarship experience for students, employees and donors by making the purchase of AcademicWorks possible,” Yoder concluded.  The new scholarship management system can be found by visiting www.mscc.edu/scholarships.