IT Services
Student Technology Fee - A brief narrative history

2008-09 Academic Year

2007-08 Academic Year
The Student Technology Fee Committee again assisted by reviewing and ranking allocation requests. Decisions made by ET in the spring of 2007 (below) limited the amount of funding available for traditional equipment uses. Consequently, the AVP for IT used the contingency fund and reserve to a greater extent than in any other year.

In the spring of 2008, the college struggled with another grim budget situation. The college decided to continue funding 5 IT positions with tech fee revenue in order to help address the shortfall in the general budget. After allowing for these positions, plus the department support positions, plus the traditionally highest ranked allocations (student internet access and library databases) there was very little tech fee remaining to allocate. The AVP for IT decided that it was not worth asking the committee to review and rank all requests. That work was done by Don McNair (representing the Office of Instruction) and Todd Lutz (representing the IT department).

2006-07 Academic Year
The Student Technology Fee Committee continued to assist with fund management. Allocations and expenses hit all-time highs this year, as the fund reserve and the effect of FY06 spending restrictions were made available to departments.

In the spring of 2007, the college struggled with another grim budget situation coming up in FY08 (a projected deficit of around $9,000,000). ET made a couple of significant decisions about the tech fee:

1. As a one-time only budget reduction measure, 5 contracted classified positions in the IT department would be funded with the tech fee in order to relieve the general fund.
2. Tech fee support for part-time department technology support positions would be limited in the future to Science, Math and CIT.

Tech fee support for staffing was an issue every year. The advice from TACT and later from the Tech Fee Committee was consistent: get staffing expenses off of this funding source. The FY04 Plan provided the guideline, “Funds may be used for hourly lab assistants, but cannot be used to fund any salaried positions.” Even using the funds for hourly lab assistants was hotly debated each year by the committee. On several occasions the AVP for IT was asked to work with ET to find some other funding source for staffing.

Funding for smart classrooms became a bigger issue. From the beginning the tech fee was used to provide or replace projectors, the original “smart” classroom equipment. As the definition of a smart classroom expanded, the cost increased. Converting a classroom to “smart” now cost between $15,000 and $20,000 and required carpenters and electricians, often contracted in. The committee allocated $100,000 to OISS for smart classrooms but also asked that some other funding source be identified for future conversions. The committee thought that student fees were not an appropriate source of funding for college physical infrastructure.

2005-06 Academic Year
A couple of major events for the tech fee happened in FY06.

The new college governance system implementation resulted in replacing some functions of TACT with the Technology Council. TACT was officially ended as a standing team. The AVP for IT created a Student Technology Fee Committee to pick up the role of assisting with fund management.

In January of 2006, the college encountered another significant budget situation. President Spilde put spending restrictions in place that resulted in an unexpected decrease in tech fee allocation spending. Instead of decreasing the reserve amount, the spending restrictions caused the amount to increase.

2004-05 Academic Year
This was the first year of “Unit Planning” and this new process caused a sharp increase in the number of tech fee requests, up from 70 to 127 in one year.

TACT continued to assist with fund management, revising and improving the plan and process incrementally every year. TACT decided that the reserve was large enough and allocated the full amount available to department requests.

2003-04 Academic Year
TACT continued to assist with student technology fee management and staff began routinely calling the tech fee “TACT funding”. All efforts to correct this inaccuracy failed.

The number and total dollar amount of requests increased as the funding source became better known. Certain “theme” questions began to emerge: what do we mean by technology (automobile engines, digital voice recorders, VCRs, workstations?); should the tech fee pay for hourly lab support; should some requests always be funded? TACT consistently recommended against funding any staffing with the tech fee. They struggled with “set asides”, always giving highest priority to some requests, but never implemented a set aside program. The debate about the definition of “technology” continues.

2002-03 Academic Year
The AVP for IT decided to utilize an existing campus-wide technology group, TACT (the Technology Consulting and Advising Team) to assist with tech fee management. TACT developed the first Technology Fee Management Plan, including criteria, fund management principles and an application process.

TACT liked the idea of building up a technology reserve fund to be used for a future “big ticket” item. There was talk of creating a “technology center” or “information commons” and part of each year’s revenue was set aside as a reserve.

During the first year, TACT received 66 requests for tech fee funding and allocated fee revenue to 61 requests. The other 5 were deemed inappropriate for the funding source.

2002
The Board, the college and many students were interested in eliminating a growing number of course fees. The fees made it difficult for students to predict the full cost of registration.

Steve John (AVP for Instruction) and Stephen Pruch (AVP for Information Technology) completed an analysis that resulted in two recommendations: (1) roll all non-technical course fees of $15 or less into $1 of additional tuition; (2) roll most technical course fees into $1 of a proposed $3 per hour student technology fee.

The proposed tech fee replaced about $300,000/year of course fees (most collected by Instructional Computing for open lab use) and generated about $600,000/year in new revenue.

The Board of Education approved a $3/credit hour general student computer technology fee at the March 18, 2002 public meeting. The fee was instituted in the summer of 2002 for all credit students and in the fall of 2002 for non-credit students. The revenue from the fee is administered by the AVP for Information Technology.