Thursday, December 12, 2013, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
PBA Conference Room, Regent 1B25
Members Present: Maren Additon, Bin Cao, Anna Henderson, Joey Hubbard, Bill Kaempfer,
Colin Johnson for Juedon Kebede, Keegan McCaffrey, Dan Poochigian,
Chris Schaefbauer, and Steve McNally, Chair
Members Absent: Robin Bryant, Ashley Prince, Erika Smith, John Stevenson
Guests: Kaye Orten, Lisa Severy, Michele Van Pelt, Don Misch & Student from
Wardenburg
I. Introductions and Review of November Minutes - Steve McNally invited introductions from everyone and then reviewed the minutes, giving a brief overview of the proposals made at the November meeting. For those proposals that still had questions, the presenters were invited to return to this month’s meeting. Steve also reiterated that there doesn’t appear to be any changes needed to our Institutional Plan for Student Fees.
II. Career Services Fee Presentation – Lisa Severy presented the proposal for a fee increase.
This is a change to an existing fee from $9 to $12. The charge will be per student/per term to include all degree seeking students except Law and D status grad students. This is the first fee increase since 2008. Lisa gave an overview of the Career Services Office purpose.
The main purpose of this request is to move two staff positions from the soft (grant) money to full integration into Career Services. In addition, some of the funds will be used for operating expenses for their newest programs to include marketing and advertising, overhead expenses, supplies and other general expenses. One goal of one of the new programs is to track students after graduation to support CU recruiting and to be compliant with the new White House College Scorecard. Further, she explained how when an economic recovery begins, the need for their services increase because companies come to them for applicants. Internships also increase because companies tend to limit their positions to fewer institutions. Most companies prefer state schools with good reputations.
Moving into C4C has also increased their visibility for students. In essence, both their traffic streams, students and business, have increased. In addition, they have also started a partnership with the Alumni Foundation. Questions were asked by the committee:
Q: Why are we charging students for a benefit that really seems to be just for the individual colleges?
A: Lisa said they are looking at longitudinal data and how this data will benefit both prospective students as well as current students. Aggregate info will be good for the whole university and should be beneficial to both groups.
Q: Are you going to look at medium information?
A: Yes, they want to do cluster analysis including retention to help students with their career goals and decisions. The ultimate goal is to identify which programs work and which might need to be revamped or removed. Working with colleges across campus, they want to make sure they don ‘t duplicate those programs that already have a working system in place.
Q: Does this fee increase include grad students?
A: Yes, this will include grad students.
Q: For this new CU Buffs program
– what is the staff person’s role?
A: There have been added responsibilities due to the surveys and coordinating events.
Although this is not a full time position, yet, they hope it will be eventually.
Q: Do you plan to collect this data through a voluntary rate. If so, how do you plan to get a good return rate?

A: The alumni survey currently runs 14-18%, which of course is not high enough. Steve added that the offer of ‘prizes’ (i.e., iPads, Cash) has increased the response rates. The incentives work. Lisa also mentioned the need for educational opportunities to ensure students that just because they’re hearing from CU, it’s not necessarily for money. She stated, “We need to build it into the culture of those who are graduating”.
Q: What about the auxiliary funds…is there a way to grow those funds?
A: Lisa said that they need to balance the cost vs. the effect. They don’t want to scare away the corporate world in an effort to find jobs for our students. They currently charge for the Career Fair and are currently the highest in peer institutions for that rate. She said there may be some room in that budget to generate funds.
When Lisa was finished with her presentation, Steve asked for a general sense from the group. Everyone agreed that the data collection program is an extremely important part, but there were still concerns regarding who would actually benefit from its implementation. In an effort to clarify further, Steve explained that even if the funds come from the General Fund, it will still be an increase in student expense via tuition increases. It was agreed that further discussion was required.
III. Continued Discussions on:
A. Wardenburg Student Health Fee – 3 representatives from Wardenburg (Michele, Don, and a student) were here to answer questions. Steve recapped the proposal presented last month. Michele began by commenting that the definition of unduckable was historically a word that originated with the CUSG requests in the past. She continued, by explaining that over the last 4 years, Wardenburg has covered operating expenses by
54.3% through means other than an increase of student fees. Don added the fee rates have been raised only in comparison to the local competition. The comment was made that Wardenburg is not trying to completely balance their budget on this additional fee.
They w on’t rely only on student fees to balance, but will look at all fees and rates. A discussion of the transition Wardenburg has made from being a cost center followed.
Additional questions included:
Q: Some committee members are still concerned about increased fees in the future.
What guarantees do we have that this won’t occur?
A: The percentage of the budget that is supported by the stude nt fees hasn’t really gone up. The fees have gone up because our costs have gone up. Also, in comparison to our peers, our fees are less than half. We are 33% compared to their 80%. The vast percent of our budget goes to salaries. Increases in salaries is dictated by the state.
Also, the timing of when we have to present our budget to the advisory board affects our numbers. Because we have to present a proposal long before we know our actual expenses, we have to work off of a best guess.
Q: How is your fund balance?
A: T he fund balance is actually very healthy. But, we don’t have a healthy plant fund balance because now we don’t have SOAR money to rely on, which helped us to cover these expenses in the past.
Q: Will we see a revised budget before it goes to the Regents?
A: No, we just need to be aware that this is how it will be with this timeline. We may always be playing catch up.
B. SEVIS Fee – Kaye Orten presented. Steve gave a recap of the proposal. General consensus from the committee was positive regarding this fee increase.
C. International New Student Matriculation Fee – Again, Steve gave a recap and Kaye answered questions. Ultimately, this is a one-time fee that will greatly increase the success of the international program. This fee is only charged the first time of

attendance. The costs are going up more at the undergrad level due to a large increase in resources being offered by CU, including additional housing and meals. The costs for the graduate level are less, but include similar costs as the undergrads. Kaye offered a deeper explanation regarding the reason for the fee.
Q: There is a concern about the $40 piece for the grad students. It seems high for just translation services and social media. Is there an opportunity for this amount to be decreased?
A: Kaye has done multiple models regarding the fee. $600 was too high. $450 was too low. Honestly, this rate may be too low. But, this is a comfortable number to start with. The number one commitment needs to be the translation piece. The service needs to be centralized as much as possible in order to limit variability and provide consistency for the university.
Q: If half of this fee is funding this pre-regular orientation event, how would you respond to increased charges in the future from Housing & Dining?
A: Conversations are currently being held with those people to keep the costs stable.
We want to minimize the disruption to the international students. There is a minimal inflation factor already figured in.
Q: Did you notice a lower retention rate because of the minimal orientation?
A: We have seen the details and hope that this will help with that rate.
IV. Other Topic(s) – Discussion regarding the proposals. In order to get a memo drafted, Steve needs to know the committees wishes by the end of January. In the past there has not been a formal vote, rather a consensus from the committee regarding the different proposals. At this time, there is positive support for the Orientation fee, the
Wardenburg fee and the SEVIS fee. Although the committee was reassured that the fee would be used primarily for translation services, there was not a consensus about the International Matriculation fee. There are still concerns about the Career
Services fee. Although there is not opposition to the whole fee, the group would like to see Career Services further explore other funding resources. Steve will discuss it with Lisa again and will have her explain it or come back again to meet with the committee.
Due to the length of this meeting, Bill will present a list of fees at next month’s meeting.
V. Next Meeting (some time after the 21 st of January, 2014)
– need to decide ASAP.
Meeting was adjourned at 4:47 pm.