[CAUT] Student fees

[Fred Sturm]

Answers below
--On Monday, December 13, 2004 12:34 PM -0800 Alan McCoy 
<amccoy@mail.ewu.edu> wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> I want to make the case to the powers that be here that it would be a good
> idea to institute a student fee to fund piano maintenance and purchase.
> I'd like to hear from others who have experience with this.
>
> If you have student fees for these purposes:
>
> 1. How much is the fee? How much is allocated for piano maintenance? Piano
> purchases?

$5 per credit hour, not specifically allocated (though there is a general 
plan attached)
>
> 2. Who pays the fee? Music majors only? Minors too? Ed majors?
>
All classes offered by the music department are assessed this fee.
	We started from a premise of needing $X per year to replace the inventory 
on an on-going basis, with a target "oldest piano" age (one for uprights, 
another for grands). I added to that a budget for rebuilding, and one for 
contracting out some of the tuning. We then calculated the number of 
"contact hours" generated by the music department, and came up with a fee 
that would produce the required amount of money.
	In fact, to date all money has gone to buy new pianos (I really, really 
want to retire the loan program, and the chair wants to keep the students 
happy by showing them where the money has gone in a visible way), but that 
will change in another year or so.
	A good bit of impetus was given this proposal by our recent NASM 
evaluation, which identified the piano inventory as a deficiency (I wrote 
that part of the department self-evaluation). This made it easier for the 
chair to get permission from the higher ups from provost office through 
regents to institute the fee.
	I'll also note that out College of Fine Arts instituted a "technology fee" 
to pay for computers and tech assistance a few years back. So we had 
precedents in place. I'll also note that many instances of lobbying for 
funds, over the 18 years I've been here, resulted in absolutely nothing 
from upper administration. I think it might have been possible to get a one 
time allocation in maybe another 10 years: it would have been an 
emergency!!! But then we'd be back to the same old problem. Much better to 
have an annual budget that WE control.
>
> Do you have any advice for me as I put my case together?  What other
> questions should I be researching?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Alan
> _______________________________________________
> caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives


Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico