2/14/20 SFAC Minutes

SFAC Meeting

Friday, Feb. 14, 2020

3:00-4:00pm

Knights Valley Room

 

 MINUTES

SFAC Members:

  • Arden Childers, AS Vice President for Finance; SFAC Co-Chair
  • Katryna Johnson, AS Senator for Sustainability;
  • Melissa Ann Kadar, Exec VP of AS;
  • Elias Lopez, Designee for VP for Student Affairs, and SFAC Co-Chair;
  • Emily Miller, AS VP of External Affairs; (absent)
  • Leonel “Leo” Navarro, AS Senator for Business and Economics, as designee for AS President; (absent)
  • Elizabeth O’Brien, Seawolf Service Center Director, as designee for Joyce Lopes, VP for Admin. & Finance; 
  • Dr. Hollis Robbins, Dean, School of Arts & Humanities, as designee for Provost, VP for Academic Affairs; (absent)
  • Laura Watt, Chair of the Faculty; (absent)
  • Hilary C. Smith, Research Services & User Experience Librarian; Student Affairs Committee Rep (absent)

 

Non-Voting SFAC Members:

  • Hayley Avery, Budget Manager, University Budget and Planning 
  • Erik Dickson, Executive Director, Associated Students; (absent)
  • David Crozier, Acting Director of Financial Aid;
  • Sue Hardisty, Administrative Assistant, VP for Student Affairs Office
  • Laura Monje-Paulson, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs

Guest:  Laura Lupei, Sr. Dir. for University Budget, University Budget and Planning

Meeting commenced at 3:05pm by Arden Childers, Co-Chair of SFAC.

AGENDA

1. Approve Minutes of 1/31/20 Meeting

Childers called for changes; hearing none, minutes were unanimously approved.

 

2. Fee Task Force of Category II Fees (recommendation)  Laura Lupei

SFAC will be asked to vote on the recommendations.

Lupei presented recommendations from the Fee Task Force following their review of Category II Fees.

The charge of task force was to review category II fees to ensure they are appropriate for level of services provided, create a process for regular assessment of mandatory fees, participate in shared governance as appropriate, communicate with SFAC about findings, and make recommendations to SFAC and Cabinet. Recommendations focus on creating long term strategies for financial health.

 

General Recommendations

  1. Consider an increased focus on strategic utilization of funds. This includes a five-year business plan, budget and reserve plan by 6/30/20.
  1. Formalize and/or strengthen student governance structures of mandatory fee programs. Each fee program should be reporting at least annually to a student governance structure for financial and programmatic review. Specifically Student Union, IRA above the line programs, etc. Without a strong student governance structure there isn’t a communication structure to see what students’ priorities are.
  1. Explore opportunities to shift expenses back to the Operating Fund when appropriate.     The task force looked at comparable sized campuses and discovered some mandatory fee programs are funded by the Operating Fund. This is challenging for SSU because we receive less money per FTE. If it is a Cabinet priority to reduce student fees, then shifting expenses to the Operating Fund would accomplish this. What do students want to maintain control of in terms of their experience and these student funded programs?
  1. Maintain the annual CPI-based increase. Recommendation is to keep this in place because the alternative could be the need to shift increased costs to other funding sources or to reduce services.

Childers asked if our fees are growing faster than our comparable campuses. Answer is yes but these other campuses did need to implement large fees periodically in order to keep up with the cost of inflation. The thought is that ours is a better model. There’s also a benefit to having some predictability in the fees and in knowing that services won’t be reduced due to shortfalls in funding from increased costs (inflation) year over year.

SSU is second to the highest systemwide in fees but we have a new Rec Center and Student Center which the students voted for. Our high fees do affect cost structure and ability to recruit and retain students but the Fee Task Force feels we are ahead of the curve, and feels we need to do a better job of communicating what students get for the fees they pay.

Fee Specific Recommendations

Counseling and Psychological Services Fee

  • Not adequately funded to provide level of service campus needs so students could consider a fee increase
  • Before a potential fee increase, create a five-year budget plan, review opportunities for efficiency and cost savings, and dual model of funding through operating fund

Student Health Center Services Fee

  • Five year capital renewal and maintenance and repair plans
  • Recommends SHC work with the Student Health Advisory Council to strengthen the advisory and governance structures of the SHAC to provide advisory support to the SHC

Student Health Center Facilities Fee

  • Partner with Facilities to create five-year maintenance and capital renewal plan for the SHC building
  • As part of SHC five-year review and reserve plan, the SHC determines the appropriate level of need for the SHC Facility Fee
  • Consider a referendum to decrease the SHC Facilities Fee and increase the SHC Operations fee in equal amounts

Associated Students Fee

  • Maintain a fiscally conservative approach to multi-year financial planning and consider aligning programmatic offerings with the strategic priorities of the campus
  • Explore options over the long-term for alternative modes of funding for the leadership, tutorial and basic needs programs that are currently funded by AS fees.

Student Union Fee (SUF)

  • Programs and structures are spread out over different areas
  • Consolidate oversight into single governing body
  • Consider naming and branding of fee on campus. CSU naming convention is “Student Union” but we could change it to something that makes more sense
  • Regular review of the modes of funding for programs funded by the SUF to determine if alternative or additional funding sources would be appropriate
  • Create a strategic reserves plan including non-routine and maintenance schedules for the building funded under the fee (Rec Center, Student Center building and operations, International Hall, Children’s School) SUF also funds the HUB and Student Involvement Programming

Instructionally Related Activities Fee

  • All permanently-funded programs should resume annual reporting to the IRA Subcommittee
  • The IRA Subcommittee, SFAC and Cabinet should seek clarity on which entity holds primary financial responsibility to keep the IRA permanently-funded (above the line) programs financially solvent.

Consolidated Services Fee (Commencement, Student Records, Seawolf Services)

  • Funds are collected in Operating Fund. We have more funding to allocate than we have budgeted for
  • Recommends that the three programs that are funding from this fee each present to SFAC on a 3-year cycle, beginning in 2020-2021 to request a portion of the new net revenue that is available from the Consolidated Services Fee as identified by the University Budget and Planning Office

Revisit how funds are allocated as things have changed since this fee was first implemented.

Laura will be back in two weeks to receive SFAC’s final recommendations.

The next two agenda items were tabled as time expired. Sue will send Qualtrics form to out to SFAC to review before next meeting. Childers concluded meeting at 4:05pm.

3. Finalize Online Course Fees (Lopez)

Tabled until next SFAC meeting.

 

4. Course Fees Process Document (discussion)

Tabled until next SFAC meeting.

 

Minutes submitted by Sue Hardisty.