This spring the tech committee will decide campus purchases for the 2013-14 fiscal year.
Every Feb-March our tech fee committee, whic
h includes students, has a series of meetings deciding what purchases should be made with the technology fees paid by tuition.
According to the Spokane Falls Community College Committee Template,“ The Student Technology Committee is composed of nine voting members, with students holding the majority interest, and two non-voting members.”
SFCC feels that students should have the majority vote because the revenue is from the students. Each member of the committee has a one year term except for the chairman who has a two year term, and the chairman goes back and forth between the Vice President of Learning and the Vice President of Student Services.
“The student government repre- sentatives on the Tech Fee Commit- tee took their jobs very seriously last year,” said last year’s chairman and Vice President of learning at Spokane Falls, Jim Minkler. “Not only did they ask good questions, they were able to suggest additional funding resources that allowed us to spread our tech fee
funds further.”
The selection process is done by the student government.
“Student representatives are chosen from/by Student Government. Faculty and staff solicitations are done by the appropriate union representatives and the Administrator is appointed by the President,” according to the committee template.
The committee then has 3-4 meetings where they decide to approve or deny requests from each division for different items of technology.
“The technology fee for one student is $40 per quarter,” according to the Spokane falls website. This equates to $880,000 for SFCC to spend on the different division requests.
The different divisions can be broken down into 7 different groups; Business, Math, Health Ed, Humanities, Human Services, Library, Student Services, and Visual and Performing Arts.
There were also college-wide purchases which made up about 70% of the money; it was spent on items such as server, network, and desktop replacements.
The department that was given the most money was visual and performing arts, which had big purchases like the Performing Arts Auditorium Lighting Project, costing $45,441.
The department with the least amount of funds was the library which was a total of $5,109 for their tech requests.
But some students already have an idea of what they would like to see for the next fiscal year.
“One thing that I would like to see is a new website to replace Angel,” said SFCC student Stephanie Bartlett. “I know they are working on getting a new one already, but it’s something I think should be at the top of the list.”