Budget Planning Council

November 17, 2006

M I N U T E S

 

Present:  Bill Decatur, Kathy Krendl, Darrell Winefordner, Phyllis Bernt, Joe McLaughlin, David Thomas, Morgan Allen, Wendy Merb-Brown, Dominic Barbato, Aimee Howlee, Morgan Vis, Rich Carpinelli, and Gail Houlette

Absent:  Gary Neiman, Greg Shepherd, Dennis Irwin

 

  1. Graduate Fee Waivers / Tuition Scholarships (Mike Mumper)
    1. Discussion of what graduate fee waivers are awarded

                                                              i.      Budgeted to Associate Provost for Graduate Studies

                                                            ii.      Budgeted to Planning Units

    1. Relationship between graduate tuition revenue and graduate fee waivers / tuition scholarships
    2. Implications for future enrollment growth

Mike Mumper visited BPC to educate the committee on guidelines regarding Graduate Tuition Scholarships.  The topics included fees, work requirements, allocation of tuition scholarship dollars, important changes and trends, and General Fee buy down.  A document listing quarters of waivers and partial waivers, recruitment scholarships, and dollar values broken down by colleges was distributed.  Caution should be taken from increasing the number of PhD students on tuition scholarships because we receive no additional state support for these students.  Therefore, we receive no additional funding for these students.  A careful review of contribution of these students towards the planning units’ goals needs to be considered versus the additional costs associated with their enrollment.

  1. General Fee Discussion (Continued)

Darrell indicated that he had sent an e-mail to planning unit heads and budget unit managers requesting that they review the list of accounts that the University has identified as being eligible to be covered by the General Fee. He indicated that this process was the final effort to ensure that we have a comprehensive list of activities covered by the General Fee, by allowing planning units to request that activities/accounts be added to the list and to provide their rationale for inclusion of these activities. The Office of Budget Planning and Analysis will then begin modeling the revenues and expenses related to the General Fee for use by the Budget Planning Council.  The Student General Fee Advisory Committee has been established along with guidelines for the composition of the Committee, the budget process and carry-forward. Please visit the link above for draft recommendations to increase student involvement in the review and allocation of the General Fee.

    1. Review to ensure that all activities to be funded by General Fee are included. (Responses due by November 23,2007)
    2. Process / Procedure drafting update
  1. Scholarships Discussion (Continued)

Vice President Decatur indicated that the presentation by Student Financial Aid (SFA) at the last meeting was informative and provides a good starting point for our budget discussions.  He also indicated that we would need to review the SFA programs in more detail as the budget process begins its prioritization process.  In particular, he suggested that we should examine each of the SFA programs and their link to the Vision Ohio goals.

  1. Strategic Planning Process Update

The strategic planning process has been shared with Vice President’s and Deans with a deadline of Jan 5 set to submit proposals to the Provost Office.  Proposals will be reviewed by the Deans and senior administrators in January/February where ranking will occur.  The ranked list of requests will then be submitted, reviewed and prioritized by the Budget Planning Council before being presented to the President.

 

BPC’s role is to act as an advisory group to the President, prioritize requests and identify intersecting interests that align with institutional goals.  It was stressed that BPC should focus on larger priority issues and not try to micro-manage and make detailed funding decisions.  The Council will meet weekly throughout this process unless otherwise noted.

 

  1. Minimum Wage

The new law enacted will only impact student employees. Currently there is no central student salary scale.  Our plans are for the Office of Budget and Planning staff will complete a costing analysis. This will be followed by a study by  a Committee chaired by Jim Kemper, that is tasked with creating a student classification system that provides consistency and equity among students based on job descriptions and their level of works. We will likely implement a short term solution to comply with the law by bringing every student up to the minimum and then addressing the expected wage compression among student workers through the student classification plan.

 

  1. (Very) Preliminary Multi-Year Budget Outline
  2. BPC discussed a very preliminary estimate of the multi-year budget plan.   Darrell indicated that most of the assumptions were still those “ballpark” estimates made earlier.  Our goal is to have the model revised for discussion at our next meeting.  Darrell and Bill also discussed our plans to change the format of the presentation to provide more detail regarding the “continuing budget” and to segregate the General Fee revenues and expenditures.

 

  1. NEXT MEETING – FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2006 – 10:00 to 12:00, (HRTC 154)