Student Fee Advisory Committee

Minutes

Monday, December 7, 2020

1:00-2:00 p.m.

1. Welcome. Meeting was called to order at 1:03pm by Co-Chair Juarez.

2. Approval of November 9 minutes. Minutes were approved with no changes.

3. Mandatory Fee Review Task Force Recommendations.

Hayley Avery is presenting on behalf of Laura Lupei. She shared the SFAC Recommendations 20-21.pdf file on the screen. The purpose of Mandatory Fee Review was to assess if mandatory fees were appropriate to support the services provided to students, create a process for regular assessment of mandatory fees, participate in shared governance as appropriate, communicate frequently with Student Fee Advisory Committee regarding findings and offer a final recommendation to be presented to SFAC and Cabinet.

The report was brought to SFAC in Spring 2021, which they approved. It was then to go before Cabinet but COVID hit and consequently, the report did not get advanced to Cabinet. In light of budgetary impacts from the pandemic, SFAC chairs asked the Task Force to re-review their prior recommendations and bring any changes to those recommendations to this year’s SFAC. The Task Force feels the recommendations are still relevant though they recognize they may take longer to implement than originally planned. Therefore, the only changes in the Fee Review Task Force recommendations were to extend the timelines to implement the recommendations.

Brambila: Asked why SFAC approved the recommendation to keep the CPI increase. Monje-Paulson explained that SFAC agreed that in most instances, keeping the CPI was a beneficial practice in order to provide the same level of services over time. When the Task Force looked at other campus funding models, they realized that those with automatic CPI increases were forced to either reduce services or look to other funding sources in order to maintain the same level of services. They felt that CPI increases offered a sustainable strategy for long-term planning.

There were no other questions.

4. IRA Additional Funding Requests for 20/21

Brambila provided a summary of the additional funding requests and approvals. She noted that two programs were inadvertently approved to receive a higher amount than they were eligible for, and asked if she had the authority to amend the IRA funding recommendations for those two programs. Without a quorum of students, Erik suggested getting full committee vote via email so we don’t hold up the process of getting these additional funds to programs to utilize in the Spring semester. Brambila will send the information in an email and collect votes from members that way. Members are asked to look for that email and to respond promptly.

Meeting adjourned at 1:39pm.