The best perk we have as faculty, aside from an opportunity for sabbatical every 7 years, is professional development travel. The process may be a bit of a pain, but the reward is so worth it. I hope you all take advantage of the $3500 allotted while it lasts. Over the summer, district updated FMS which made a few changes to the system and how you submit your travel request. Sorry, the changes didn’t make it any easier from my perspective, but there wasn’t anything too drastic that changed. Check out the new Travel Authorization quick reference guide.
The biggest change is Entering Notes. Entering Notes in your Travel Authorization is a requirement to justify the purpose of your travel and/or activity before submitting your Travel Authorization for approval. In the new system, you won’t immediately see the Notes link, so you now have to click Summary and Submit in the upper right corner. After you do that, you will now see the Notes link to add your notes.
Also, don’t forget what needs to be included in your justification notes. Our Travel Rep, Rosie Mays, sent out an email with that information last week. She said, Please remember that you must include the six elements required by the committee in the “notes” (these used to be “comments” last year.)
Here are the six elements and the statement regarding prepayment.
- 1. Location, Conference Title, Dates/start and end times
- Rationale for attending per discipline (please include specific courses you teach with title and prefix.
- Prior Travel (if applicable) for 2017-2018 fiscal year (list award and reimbursement)
- Personal travel days (if, applicable)
- Explanation if cost is more than $3,500 (which office covers overage)
- Non-standard items (e.g. not requesting registration/self-pay because applying for Salary Advancement after end of conference.
The other item is the paragraph we crafted regarding pre-approval purchase with personal funds. Here is that paragraph that was approved by VC Thompson.
“I have purchased the following (e. g. airfare, registration, hotel reservation, ground transportation, etc.) using personal funds. I accept that the purchase of these items are solely my financial responsibility if any or all of the request is rejected.”
If you need any help filling out your travel request, send a help request to CTLE@gccaz.edu or request a workshop training by filling out our Have It Your Way form: bit.do/YourWay. And don’t forget to check out our list of conferences available this year.