UC & US Bank Student Engagement Fund Awarded Projects

Previously Awarded Projects

Every year, U.S. Bank awards up to $125,000 in Student Engagement Funds to UC campuses, selected by a joint committee of UCOP and U.S. Bank representatives. Students have an opportunity to work in paid internship positions to improve UC’s procure-to-pay systems, processes or programs while providing a unique experiential education opportunity.

Six projects in 2025:

• UC DAVIS: Instant Card Launch ($22,520) – This grant will fund a student intern position to support the campus-wide Instant Card launch. This intern will help plan and implement the Instant Card launch for use by employees and guest travelers, and build communication and change management skills by developing end-user resources.
• UCLA: Streamlining Vendor Orders/Payments ($18,520) – This project aims to streamline how UCLA handles vendor orders and payments. The team is working to speed up order processing by avoiding slow purchase order steps, fixing issues that cause invoice mismatches, and using auto-pay to prevent delivery delays, credit holds, and strained vendor relationships.
• UCOP: Bolstering Payment Plus and V-Card Programs ($18,395) – This project focuses on strengthening UCOP's Payment Plus and V-Card programs by improving internal knowledge, supplier communication, and engagement tools. The intern will develop clear reference guides, training materials, and supplier-facing templates to support smoother enrollment and stronger participation. They’ll also create tracking tools to monitor adoption and help internal teams identify ideal supplier candidates. The goal is to boost supplier retention and program expansion by making it easier for both staff and suppliers to understand and benefit from these payment solutions.
• UC SANTA BARBARA: Financial Modernization ($13,520) – As part of UCSB’s Financial Management Modernization (FMM) project and the launch of Oracle Financials Cloud, this internship supports the Bank Card Team’s work to improve business processes and training resources. The intern will help evaluate and enhance current workflows, refine training materials, collaborate with the central training office, and support ongoing system optimization. They’ll also assist in gathering campus feedback to ensure continuous improvement and user adoption of new tools and processes.
• UC SANTA CRUZ: Increasing Payment Plus Adoption ($26,520) – Building on last year’s successful Payment Plus expansion—which nearly doubled program spend—this project focuses on shifting vendor payments away from checks, ACH, and wires to boost revenue, reduce risk, and improve efficiency. The intern will analyze payment data, reach out to vendors, and support onboarding to Payment Plus, including Proxy Pay where needed. They’ll also help review vendor construction contracts to identify strategic opportunities for further program adoption.
• UCSF: Virtual Pay & P-Card Program Upgrades ($25,520) – This project aims to improve Virtual Pay and P-Card programs by addressing inefficiencies, enhancing supplier engagement, and simplifying internal processes. The intern will analyze communication gaps, especially with low-transaction suppliers, and design outreach strategies to reduce opt-outs and improve participation. They’ll also support efforts to increase P-Card adoption by identifying common barriers, improving training materials, and promoting program benefits. Project goals include cutting costs, reducing manual work, and aligning procurement tools with broader financial goals.

Six projects in 2024:

• UC SANTA BARBARA ($9,840): Procurement Card Business Process Optimization for Modernization – This project aims to prepare UCSB's internal systems and stakeholders for the launch of Oracle Financials Cloud in July 2025, focusing on optimizing Procurement Card business processes managed through the Jaggaer Procurement System.
• UC SANTA CRUZ ($25,000): Card Program Expansion and Revenue Generation – This project intends to increase revenue generation at UCSC by analyzing operational spend data and redirecting payments from traditional methods (checks and ACH) to more efficient payment solutions such as Payment Plus, Instant Card, CTE-Cards, and P-Cards.
• UC SAN DIEGO ($20,000): Chatbot Implementation for Integrated Procure-to-Pay Solutions (IPPS) – This project will implement a chatbot system within UCSD’s IPPS Department to streamline procure-to-pay, travel, and expense inquiries, enhancing customer service efficiency and user experience.

Additional awards were made to UC DAVIS, UC IRVINE, and UCSF. These projects included P-card usage and analysis, supplier engagement strategies and payments, and campaigns to refocus travel and reimbursement spend to card program offerings.

Six projects in 2023:

• UC Davis: $17,600 – Kauli to Oracle Integration
• UCLA: $17,000 – Captured Spend, Campus Centered, Consolidation-focused
• UC San Diego: $18,000 – Departmental Business Reviews
• UC San Diego Health: $16,000 – E-Invoicing Expansion
• UC Santa Barbara: $6,300 – Purchase Card Expansion
• UC Santa Cruz: $25,000 – Payment Card Use Expansion Team

Seven projects in 2022:

• UC DAVIS: Virtual Card Aggie Enterprise Analyst - In 2021 the UC Davis Payment Plus program generated $95 million in spend and nearly $2 million in incentives that went directly back to the University. With our conversion from KFS to Oracle we must convert all existing Payment Plus suppliers into Oracle. This student intern will work with our Admin IT team to ensure that file data is accurate and up to date prior to conversion.
• UCLA: P-Card Program Expansion - This project will focus on expanding and streamlining the P-Card program through initiatives and modifying the audit process. The project aims to divert allowable spend to the P-Card, increase cardholder and department card count, and improve operating efficiency by streamlining the P-Card Audit of the Sales/USE tax accrual process.
• UC MERCED: Procurement Card Expansion - UC Merced will expand the P-Card program by hiring three part-time student workers to assist in gathering and analyzing current P-Card spend data, maximizing P-Card process efficiencies, creating and integrating capabilities for automation in P-Card processes for our campus.
• UC SAN DIEGO: Manual Payment Outreach - This project aims to review UCSD’s Proxy Pay efforts and identifying missed opportunities to capture spend and provide suppliers with the best payment method. The Manual Payment Outreach will bring value to the program by increasing enrollment to the virtual card program and thus creating revenue for the program as well as cutting costs on issuing check payments.
• UC SAN DIEGO: Divert Out-of-Pocket Reimbursements to Card Products - UCSD identified that many reimbursed expenses could have been originally purchased with a Procurement Card or Travel & Entertainment Card. The goal of the project is to divert out of pocket reimbursements to a card product.
• UC SAN DIEGO: Procure-to-Pay Certification - This project will design and develop a certification to educate campus on UC San Diego’s travel and entertainment & non-events processes (Travel & Entertainment Policies, Booking, T&E Card, Non-Events, and Reconciliation). This project aims to create a fully conceptualized and developed UC San Diego Travel & Entertainment Certification.
• UCSF: Research Participant Payment Optimization - Supply Chain Management (SCM) will optimize and bring efficiencies to the UCSF research participant payment process. UCSF SCM is implementing a UCSF-wide reloadable card-based payment solution. UCSF departments will have direct access to a system where they can set up research participants, obtain approvals for payments, and issue payments quickly to research participants using reloadable cards. This solution will also eliminate the manual work on processing 4000 checks and check requests annually.

Five projects in 2021:

• UC Berkeley Vendor Triage Project – This project will expand on previous year by identifying newly enrolled vendors that should be paid via physical card and via Payment Plus, and use data gathered to help drive UCB decisions.
• UC Davis P-Card Data Analyst – Student will work with “AggieDash” to identify opportunities to grow the procurement card program. Student will work with Data Analytics team to identify departments not using the procurement card to pay vendors that accept credit card payment, extract data from AggieDash to support growth of P-card program, and ultimately increase spend of the P-card program.
• UCLA P-Card/DB Card Expansion Project – This project will expand spend within the P-Card and DB card programs through outreach, marketing, program materials, direct campus communication and solicitations.
• UC Merced Payment Plus – This project will implement an integrated Payment Plus program using Oracle AP to process payment files for suppliers. This funding supports hiring three part-time students to work on the Payment Plus campaign and the creation and integration of automated capabilities for Payment Plus transaction reconciliation.
• UC San Diego STP COVID Relief for Small Business Partnerships – This project will evaluate the success of the STP COVID Relief Campaign and adoption rates from our small business focus group. Success will be determined by acceptance rates, amount of spend estimated, amount of spend actually captured once enrolled. Campaign results will determine if it is valuable and viable enough to be adopted moving forward.

Four projects in 2020:

• UC Berkeley Vendor Investigation & Payment Plus Expansion – This project utilizes student interns to analyze and investigate existing vendors to identify new opportunities for Payment Plus (specifically STP and Proxy Pay) utilization.
• UCLA Card Programs Expansion Project – This project utilizes multiple student interns and will focus on expanding spend within UCLA Payment Plus and PCard programs through outreach, direct campus communication and solicitations.
• UCSC Expanded use of CTE Cards, P-cards & Payment Plus – Leveraging two student interns, this project expands the use of CTE, Pcards and Payment Plus at UCSC through a combination of system, policy and process changes that will eliminate travel advances, improve controls and compliance, reduce costs and move the campus towards a full source-to-pay solution while increasing revenues generated through these programs.
• UC San Diego P-Card Team – This project utilizes a student intern to support the continuity of select card programs as UCSD undergoes an Enterprise Systems Renewal. Additionally, the student will strategically target suppliers and work with them to convert payments to Ghost Cards, often in lieu of expensive check payments.

Five projects in 2019:

• UC San Diego Payment Strategy Communications Management – This project utilizes a student intern to develop strategic communication material and consistent messaging to ensure San Diego's internal and external clients have a thorough understanding of the campuses Payment Strategy.
• UC Davis Virtual Card Specialist – This project utilizes a student intern to establish and maintain working relationships with assigned business accounts, serving as the main day-to-day contact between program administrators and relationship managers in order to help grow card program spend.
• UCOP Revenue Process Reporting – This project utilizes a student intern to help design, develop and codify a reliable and replicable end-to-end business process to receive, route, monitor and report revenue generated by key UC procurement units.
• UCSF P2P Process Optimization – This project establishes a paid student team to support UC San Francisco's Supply Chain Management (SCM) unit with initiatives focused on optimizing UCSF's procure-to-pay processes.
• UC San Diego Virtual Card Supplier Services Optimization – This project utilizes a student intern to support the growth of UCSD's virtual payment program opportunities and the efficient management of outstanding payments.

Three projects in 2018 (program first year):

• UC Merced Procure-to-Pay (P2P) Implementation – This project establishes a paid student team to support UC Merced’s major initiative to update its procurement systems. The project facilitates UC Merced’s adoption of an integrated and optimized Procure-to-Pay (P2P) model aligned with the "SupplyChain 500" (SC500) system-level initiative.
• Student Talent Strategy at UC San Diego’s Integrated Procure-to-Pay Solutions (IPPS) – UCSD IPPS develops and launches a program to manage UC San Diego student employees in a coordinated way that benefits IPPS and clients, and enhances the student experience. It provides a path of progressive responsibility, opportunities to rotate among IPPS areas, and cross-functional projects that align with a student’s evolving academic and career goals.
• UC San Diego Payment Compass – This project utilizes a student intern to support the onboarding of suppliers and payees to do business with the University using a new tool, Payment Compass, which helps payees sign-up for electronic invoice submission, virtual card payments, and also offers real-time payment status visibility.