Technology Fee - 2006/2007 Update
TO: The UM-Flint Faculty, Staff, and Students
FROM: Technology Fee Committee
(V. Lotfi-Chair, S. Arnst, M. Deibis, D. Fry, L. Hicks, K. Im, H. Sherman, and B. Taylor)
DATE: April 30, 2007
SUBJECT: 2006/2007 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 this 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 over 30 departmental, open and instructional computer labs, containing over 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, assigned to faculty and staff, used in the student purchase program, or salvaged.
In academic year 2006/2007 the Committee funded the following items:
- ITS maintenance and computer lab supplies $99,370
- Technology Committee software funds $15,000
- Ongoing commitments (e.g., contracts/maintenance agreements, modem pool, Internet access, MCard, and MCS) $225,341
- Lab upgrades, smart cart computer upgrades, wireless network, mobile laptop cart $366,050
- Other Tech Plan related items $115,000
- Microsoft software agreement $37,000
- Banner Alumni module and maintenance (Web4Parent) $49,558
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 under estimates 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.