Technology Fee - 2007/2008 Update

TO: The UM-Flint Faculty, Staff, and Students

 

FROM: Technology Fee Committee

(V. Lotfi-Chair, S. Arnst, M. Deibis, D. Fry, J. Gandhi, L. Hicks, K. Im, H. Sherman, and B. Taylor)

 

DATE: October 7, 2008

 

SUBJECT: 2007/2008 Update


 
As in previous years, the Technology Fee Committee is pleased to provide this update, highlighting a summary of the projects funded by the fee during the academic year.  The Technology Fee Committee is responsible for administering the funds generated from students’ technology fee.  In general, Tech Fee funds are used to support projects/initiatives that benefit the largest number of UM-Flint students and the entire campus.  Accordingly, a large portion of the funds are used every year to implement parts of the UM-Flint Technology Plan.  The Plan includes five categories of IT-related items as follows:

  • computer labs
  • infrastructure
  • maintenance agreements/contracts
  • faculty/staff computing equipment
  • ITS supported software

 

Because the Tech Fee funds are not sufficient to implement the Technology Plan in its entirety, a life-cycle approach is utilized to replace/upgrade technology plan components that are of high priority.  For instance, the campus now houses 30 departmental, open and instructional computer labs, containing close to 640 computers.  The labs are placed on a two to four year replacement cycle depending upon their utilizations.  Computers taken out of a lab during an upgrade are then redeployed to other computer labs, used in the student purchase program, or salvaged.

 

In academic year 2007/2008 the Committee funded the following items:

  • ITS maintenance and computer lab supplies $110,000   
  • Technology Committee software funds for teaching $15,000
  • Ongoing commitments (e.g., contracts/maintenance agreements, Internet access, MCard, and MCS) $246,000
  • Microsoft software agreement $57,500
  • Lab upgrades, wireless network infrastructure, SAN storage, server upgrades, new switches $621,000
  • Other Tech Plan related items $115,000

 

Because the Tech Fee funds are enrollment driven, it is virtually impossible to estimate the exact total funding, generated by the fee at the beginning of a fiscal year.  Therefore, the Committee generally underestimates the projected funding.  Later, toward the end of the fiscal year, if there are still remaining uncommitted funds available and there would be new high priority items, they will be considered for funding.

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