Student Services Fee Advisory Board to consider fee project proposals for UA campus

By BRITTNY MEJIA Published February 24, 2013 at 10:53pm Updated February 24, 2013 at 10:53pm

Students will make recommendations this week regarding student services fee funding for programs across campus.

With about $2 million to allocate, the 11 board members of the Student Services Fee Advisory Board will go through 29 project proposals at open meetings Monday and Friday. The programs vary from retention based programs to ASUA club funding.

“One of the biggest questions we ask ourselves is, ‘Is there a need for this on campus?’” said Justin Evans, a political science junior and the chair of the fee board. “We think whether or not we’ll [board members] use this program.”

To help members of the board, they can look at a survey, generally conducted in the fall, that asks students about their priorities. The goal is to try and understand what is most important to the students, according to Melissa Vito, vice president of Student Affairs.

When all of the applications were submitted this spring, the board met every Friday to discuss the proposals in depth to see what funding could be provided, if any, according to Evans. Now, at the open meetings, members will go through each proposal one by one, discuss it in-depth, make recommendations and then vote on if they want to fund it fully or partially and for multiple years or just one year.

Following this decision, the board will then give its recommendations to Vito and who then makes the final decision on the distribution of funding.

“I don’t think I’ve actually ever changed a recommendation,” Vito said. “The student services fee board does such a great job of really being thoughtful about what they do that I generally always honor their recommendations.”

The amount of proposals increased by eight from the last year, although this isn’t too much of a concern because the amount of money to allocate also increased from $1.5 million to $2 million.

Each of the 29 project proposals included a budget, which includes staff, operations or travel. Also submitted, was a two-page description of the program and why it should be funded.

One of the projects is an employer and career development program, which helps address the “expanded career opportunities” students mentioned they wanted to see in a survey at the beginning of the year, according to Eileen McGarry, director of UA Career Services.

“What we’re trying to do is keep this momentum and further it,” McGarry said.

Another program is a cyberbullying campaign, which would be launched in conjunction with the, “Be a Friend. Do Something” campaign, according to Johanne Ives, assistant dean of students.

Specifically, the funding would be directed toward cyberbullying, Ives said.

The campaign would be focused on educating students about what cyberbullying is, how to protect themselves with increasing privacy settings and talking about how to report it if they feel they’re witnessing cyberbullying, Ives added.

Students will take a look at proposals throughout the week before making final decisions.

“I think each member of the board has a unique perspective and allowing them to take that perspective to allocate that money to different programs is a huge benefit as opposed to just having administrators or faculty sit in the room and analyze the data,” Evans said. “We’re kind of going off our personal experiences.”

Open Meetings

Monday: 7 p.m. in the Tucson room
Friday: 5 p.m. in El Portal