From the Top: University Financials and the Finance Data Warehouse
Friday, 10/31 @ 11 AM PST via Zoom
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Learn how university funding is tracked, organized, and reported. This session introduces the Finance Data Warehouse within the CSU Common Financial System (CFS). Using the Financial Summary as of Period Report, you'll learn not only how to select finance data for reporting, but also how to view budgets, actuals, and encumbrances, and learn how to export data to Excel or Google Sheets for further use.
This is for anyone who wants to understand how to pull financial reports from CFS and read them with confidence.
From the Top: Using University Financials in Excel
Friday, 11/14 @ 11 AM via Zoom ()
Learn how glean insights from university financials by exporting them to Excel (or Sheets). This session focuses on working with Finance Data Warehouse downloaded (.csv) data in Excel. You'll learn how to use key functions and features pivot tables to summarize data. As well, other useful functions like VLOOKUP(), SUMIF(), and more are explored for improved and efficient analysis.
This is for anyone who works with downloaded CFS reports and wants to organize, interpret, and share financial data more effectively.
From the Top: Calculating Instructional Costs
Friday, 12/5 @ 11 AM via Zoom ()
Instruction is the heart of our mission. Understanding what contributes to its direct costs is vital to ensuring effective resource use. This session explores how faculty workload, lecturer appointments, and academic-year payroll combine to shape the direct costs of delivering instruction and programming. From WTUs, SCUs, SFR, and other arcane measures and metrics, you’ll learn how to connect instructional effort, enrollment, and funding data to produce reliable cost estimates that inform planning and budgeting.
This is for anyone who wants to interpret and communicate instructional cost within their department, college, or operation.
From the Top: Conversing with Your Data Through ChatGPT
Friday, 12/12 @ 11 AM via Zoom ()
Discover how artificial intelligence can make institutional data more approachable. This session demonstrates how ChatGPT can clarify terminology, explore data, summarize information drawn from existing reports, and come to all sorts of wrong (and right!) conclusions. Participants will see how "prompts" can shape responses and how AI can support analysis without replacing professional expertise. Most importantly, this session introduces both the power of the machine and the caution it requires by emphasizing thoughtful use of AI as a complement, but never substitute for, human judgment in data interpretation and decision-making.
This is for anyone interested in learning how to use AI tools thoughtfully to enhance data interpretation and support decision-making.