Scholarship Management at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro: An Update to the Current Ecosystem

Abstract

The research activities in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) is highly dependent of the development of research projects. Most times, these projects have, at the core of their workforce, scholarship fellows financed by the project budget and responsible for the execution of very specific research tasks. The procurement process, leading to the contracting of these fellows, evolves several internal bureaus, from several organic units of the HEI, in a complex and long process. This work reports on the development of system to support this process. The solution was integrated in the HEI ecosystem in a harmonious manner, by implementing the necessary features and using the other HEI systems features when possible. After a year, the scholarship management system has proved a success, providing the user features to conduct the process as well as the management analytics to proper support the governance of the research area. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.