Tech fee funds soon will be put to use

With approximately $960,000 generated from the $4.42 per-credit-hour technology fee that was implemented in fall of 2009, University of West Florida students may be wondering how the money will be spent.    

Now that proposals by academic departments have been made and proposal requests for individual faculty members have been submitted, the funds from the fee will soon be used to improve labs, and enhance teaching through the use of technology.

Pam Northrup, the chair of the proposal committee and interim dean of the College of Professional Studies, said that a committee was formed a year ago to write guiding principles that expressed that the funds would go directly to teaching and learning.

“At this time, there are two ways that the funds can be used,” she said. “There is a systemic project proposal process that has just been closed.”

Northrup said that academic departments on campus submitted proposals for consideration.

“The systemic proposals will address such things as labs, and new uses of technology for teaching and learning,” she said. “Awards will be made by the Technology Fee Committee within the next two weeks.”

The Technology Fee Committee is comprised of faculty, students and administrators.

“The second way funding can be received is through individual faculty projects,” Northrup said. “Project proposal requests are out right now for individual faculty and departments to propose ways that they may be able to use technology, specifically for teaching and learning.”

Northrup said that once projects are awarded, they will be posted on the provost’s Web site.

“We will begin to see the benefits of this, once funds are awarded.” Stephen Loveless, president of the UWF Gay-Straight Alliance, said that he openly advocated for the fee with other students around the state, because he felt that there was a need for higher levels of technology on the UWF campus.

     
“I was very much a small component of a much larger system that was taking place at that time,” he said.

Loveless said that although he supports the technology fee, he thinks that the administration should do a better job informing students about where the money is going.

“If that money has been raised, I think that there is a small lack of communication between the administration and between the student body,” he said.

If the money is being taken from the students for technology purposes, why didn’t we consider using that money when they closed the SAIL lab, or when they took away the excess hours of the SAIL lab?   

“I am more than happy to pay my fees and support that, but when you never tell me where that money goes, that’s a problem.”

However, Michelle Woolwine, the former finance chair for the Student Government Association, was the student representative on the Technology Fee Committee.  

“The fee money can’t be used to keep the SAIL lab open, because of the structure and laws regarding the actual spending of the fee,” she said. “The fee is supposed to go towards technology initiatives, such as actual computers and actual tangible technology efforts.”

“Trying to keep the lab open – the staffing, the building, the lighting – is a completely different area of money.” Woolwine said that she thinks the administration has taken into consideration a lot of different opinions and aspects of the university as a whole.

“They talk and work through SGA mostly,” she said. “It’s hard to take the students’ perspective, I guess, because there were a lot of times when students were thinking about the fee, they were thinking about the SAIL lab’s hours, because that’s been a really big issue.

“There’s always going to be room for improvement, but as far as the initial starting, they’re doing a very good job looking at all the obstacles.”