Time & Location: 8:30 – 10:30 a.m., 220 Seymour
Attendees
Voting Members
- Mike Andriatch
- Joy Bhadury
- Davida Bloom
- Steven Breslawski
- Frances Dearing
- Scott Haines
- Jim Haynes
- Shanelle Hodge
- Debbie Jacob
- Josh Johannes
- Sara Kelly
- Kadathur Lakshmanan
- Teresa Major
- Jose Maliekal
- Brad Menear
- Dave Mihalyov
- Chantelle Nasri
- Sandeep Singh
- Kathryn Wilson
Non-Voting Members
- Denise Copelton: Co-Chair
- Crystal Hallenbeck
- Lou Spiro: Co-Chair
- Melissa Wight
Guests
- Anna Hintz
- Carl O’Connor
- Monique Rew-Bigelow
- Craig Ross
- Dana Weiss
Regrets
Voting Members
- Tom Hernandez
- Cherise Oakley
- Summer Reiner
Non-Voting Members
- President Macpherson
- Kathleen Peterson
- Karen Riotto
The meeting was called to order at 8:32am
Approval of April 12, 2018 and April 19, 2018 Minutes
Dr. Copelton asked the committee to review the minutes from the April 12, 2018 meeting. With no corrections, Dr. Haynes motioned the minutes to be approved, Dr. Lakshmanan seconded the motion, and all were in favor so the minutes were approved.
Dr. Copelton asked the committee to review the minutes from the April 19, 2018 meeting. With no corrections, Mr. Andriatch motioned the minutes to be approved, Mr. Mihalyov seconded the motion, and all voting members were in favor except for one abstention. Therefore, the minutes were approved.
Presentations
Note: Presentations are available on Blackboard and on the JPBC website.
The following questions, answers, and discussion points occurred during the following presentations.
Residential Life/DIFR
Presented by Monique Re-Bigelow, Interim Director of Residential Life/Learning Communities and Mr. Craig Ross, Associate Director of Residential Life
Dr. Copelton: The temporary employee that is working on the card access, do they manage the card system and they enter people into it? Is that what they do?
Mr. Ross: They actually install card access onto the doors. They have done some on the Union for us and they have done some exterior doors on the residence halls.
Dr. Copelton: In the traditional corridor style residence halls, is it right now that there is a
designated bathroom that is men and another one women so this is changing that in one single
hall?
Ms. Rew-Bigelow: On the first floor of most buildings, there is a single use bathroom that is
now an all gender bathroom, but in the corridor style specific buildings, we are working slowly because it is costly in some instances to change them to single use. For example, a stack in McLean would be the first, second, and third floor in a whole section that would all have bathrooms that are single use so anyone could access them from anywhere in the building.
Dr. Copelton: I just want to make sure I am understanding this correctly, in those traditional
corridor style halls there will be a mixture of both single sex as well as gender inclusive?
Ms. Rew-Bigelow: In McLean Hall for example, yes.
Dr. Bloom: Do those single use bathrooms have a shower?
Ms. Rew-Bigelow: Yes.
Dr. Copelton: One last follow-up question, are the hallways themselves still single sex or is it
mixed?
Ms. Rew-Bigelow: So, depending on who applies to be in the Living/Learning communities
actually drives that breakdown. There tends to be sections of a floor who identify with a single gender, but we also don’t segregate folks who are looking for gender inclusive housing. So there isn’t just one section of a residence hall that only has folks that are looking for that. It’s really that we want to honor their living and learning community preference, if it is suite or corridor style, so we have folks of a variety of gender we will identify and be placed with their number one preference. Not just based on bathrooms because we want to be able to make that accessible to everybody.
Dr. Maliekal: One of the slides indicated that through your office, we provide 1.35 million
dollars in scholarships annually. What is the inflow and outflow of the money for that? Can you just give some details?
Dr. Wilson: It is not money. It is from the student’s total bill, it comes off of their room. So, it is a room scholarship.
Dr. Maliekal: So, it is an in-kind type of thing.
Dr. Wilson: Yes.
Dr. Bloom: It takes money out of your pocket but it is not money you are giving to students.
Dr. Lakshmanan: The operation of University Police, exactly what is funded? Is it the entire
operation or is it personnel?
Mr. Ross: So, we fund salaries.
Dr. Wilson: I think we fund six.
Dr. Kelly: They don’t fund the whole department.
Dr. Lakshmanan: So, the operational funds are not supported from this. Will you be buying
cameras?
Mr. Ross: If they are for the residence halls, yes.
Dr. Copelton: You are doing some work with security cameras, correct?
Mr. Ross: Yes, security cameras. We have a FFE account in Residential Life that we use for
things like furniture and equipment, so we are using that for the cameras.
Dr. Singh: The bed count that you have listed, does that incorporate the new residential hall?
Mr. Ross: The new residential hall is for swing space so we will have a building that will be
unoccupied. The overall bed count is not going to go up. We are charging a little more for Eagle Hall, but we did not include that in the revenue projections. We just want to see how that plays out for a year before we put that in the numbers. If we get more revenue, that is a plus but we budget at a lower number.
Dr. Singh: So, some other dorms will be vacant?
Mr. Ross: One will be vacant.
Mr. Haines: So, the part of the budget you didn’t adjust was the small increase that you would generate from Eagle Hall.
Mr. Ross: It is $400 more a year and there are 256 beds minus the Residential Assistants.
Dr. Copelton: Which residence hall is going off line next year?
Mr. Ross: It will be Gordon Hall. It will be used as an overflow building, like Morgan has in the past, for the first four to five weeks.
Dr. Bloom: You are happy with the amount that you are traditionally funded with, you are not
asking for more money?
Mr. Ross: In fiscal year 2015-16, we asked for a room rate increase of 3.8% and we were given that for five years. After that, we will see where we are at in 2021.
Dr. Bhadury: According to estimates that I have seen, between 2000-3000 students may not live in dorms but live within walking distance of the university. All of Residential Life, from what I have seen, is concerned about the students who live in the residential areas. The purpose of residential life is to create “stickiness” on campus. Are there programs that you do for students that live within walking distance?
Ms. Rew-Bigelow: Absolutely. That will come out in our cross divisional partnerships, but two specific examples would be Delta College partnerships and Honors College partnerships. We work very closely with them as they have living/learning communities but knowing that those are communities that are connecting with other communities. If we have for example, a field trip going on with the Honors College or something going on in the residence halls as they are preparing for their Scholar’s Day presentations. Those folks will come into the residence halls and have their meetings there. A lot of the peer mentoring goes on in the residence halls. Knowing that we are supporting the living/learning communities but also that there are other folks that don’t live on campus but they live very closely, we honor that. In addition to that, our office supports programming that is open to all of our students. For example, the Tim Collin’s presentation or Prevention and Outreach Services. Different things, building community around the College, providing student activities, things like that. We know that is going to benefit all of our students and we support that financially as well.
Dr. Wilson: Let me add, the responsibility to work with our “resimmuters”, which are the
students that live around the campus. That responsibility for programming lies with Student
Union and Activities.
Mr. Ross: In our Master Plan in 2012, we were told for the student that live off campus, if you build it, they will come and live back on campus. Right now, we only have suite style for our upper classman. With the new residence hall, we have hotel style and we saw 10 students that chose to live back on campus again instead of off campus. So, maybe next year when the
residence hall has been around for a year, it will help to create more of that “stickiness” for the junior and seniors.
Dr. Copelton: You said the last Master Plan was done in 2012, but is it updated regularly?
How regularly and I am wondering what kind of changes have been reflected since 2012.
Mr. Ross: We have a group called the DIFR Strategic Team. It has all of the Assistant Vice
Presidents on it and we meet monthly. After the first phase of Eagle Hall, we said what is the
next step and we decided the next step in the original Master Plan was to renovate the Middle
Quad. Now, it is looking at our revenue, our expenditures, debt service, analyzing all of that
again, and saying we can now move forward with the next phase. What has changed with the
Master Plan? Nothing really, I think we are on track and the Middle Quad was high priority in
that Master Plan.
Dr. Copelton: I know we have changing demographics in the State of New York, and
everywhere, and we are seeing more nontraditional students, more older students, students who might not necessarily want or need on campus residency. I am wondering if those kinds of demographic shifts in the student population are taken into account in the Master Plan.
Dr. Wilson: Not with housing because we are still a very traditional campus in terms of our
incoming freshman. We still have a small percentage of transfer students that want housing.
How many transfers want housing?
Mr. Ross: About 185.
Dr. Wilson: 185 out of 1300 transfers want housing.
Dr. Kelly: I would say that the way we are considering is that at every phase we are looking at occupancy rate, are they going higher or lower. To what Mr. Ross is saying, knowing that in ten years we might not have the same plan as we have today. So, looking at every phase of that and being really careful about the trends that we are seeing. We are not seeing a change yet, but that is not to say in ten years we might want to be more thoughtful about number trends.
Dr. Copelton: I am just wondering how that factors into things like plans for building new
buildings and renovating existing ones.
Mr. Ross: One of the things I can comment on is, during the Master Plan we were working with an architect and he has kicked some ideas around with me and we would have to talk about it as a group. With the next generation coming in, Gen Z generation, they have different needs and characteristics then the millennials had. For example, there is talk that they don’t need as much space in their rooms as the millennials needed. They may need a bit smaller space; they like to get out and meet other students. Which might be a little bit different than millennials. It is just a different generation. So maybe when we renovate, we may want to change it a little bit so that we can accommodate a different demographic.
Brockport Auxiliary Service Corporation (BASC)
Presented by Ms. Dana Weiss, Executive Director of BASC and Ms. Anna Hintz, Assistant Executive Director of BASC
Dr. Lakshmanan: I thought the $970,000 were BASC Dollars and could only be spent on BASC.
Mr. Spiro: Some of those funds are for the College Support accounts.
Dr. Lakshmanan: So that means it could be used for other things too.
Mr. Spiro: Correct.
Ms. Weiss: I believe some goes towards scholarships too.
Dr. Singh: I can’t find last year’s presentation, but if I remember correctly there was an increase in the meal plan, am I accurate about that?
Ms. Weiss: Yes
Dr. Singh: For 2017-18, it was stated that if we don’t meet our targets, the number of meal
plans, there will be a deficit. Based on that, the increase in price of meal plans was granted and now we have a 1.2 million dollar surplus after taking out a million dollars out for the College. What is the goal for this money? Can you just speak a little bit to that?
Ms. Weiss: Sure. First of all, there is a couple of things. Realize that we are very restrained in
our abilities to find more top line revenue streams by who we are, how we exist, and what our
contract is. Our core business is dining and the core moneymaker is meal plans. As I said, the
swing in the sale of meal plan is really, where we break even or generate a surplus. Our
numbers basically stay static and our expenses, as in everywhere else, go up every year. The
highest increase on meals plans is $75 and does down to $50. This are expenses we cannot
control. Just to cover minimum wage, which was put in by the State. Given our large payroll
and this doesn’t even address wage compression, this year the increase in wage expenses for
student employees is $91,000 and part-time is $35,000, so a total increase of $126,000 just doing everything the same. We also pay rent and utilities to the campus. Our utilities went up; I think $104,000 this year. This is based on a formula that is incredibly complicated.
Dr. Copelton: It was 34% increase based on your summary.
Ms. Weiss: It is an incredible amount. It is a whole process of give and take, and maybe next
year we get a credit, but right now that is an expense I have to cover. We also have bad debt
that is going up. New York State has also decided that auxiliary services also have to comply
with Statute 15A, which is procuring MWBE suppliers. Unfortunately, in our industry there are not many MWBE suppliers. If you look at what we buy and the volume of what we buy and prices go up and up and there really isn’t a giant pool of suppliers there. In order to comply with this, we actually had to hire a company at $20,000 a year, just to basically prove what we already do, that these suppliers don’t exist in our industry but we are mandated to this. Our expenses go up every year and our revenue source is the meal plans. We also, have union negotiations to deal with. We do everything in our power to control our cost. Because we have an incredibly talented dining team, this year we brought our of cost of goods expense down from 29% to 27% and scored our highest satisfaction rate ever.
Dr. Copelton: What is the period of time for the union contracts?
Ms. Weiss: It is three years.
Dr. Copelton: Can you just explain what the bad debt is?
Ms. Weiss: Those are unpaid meal plans.
Dr. Copelton: Plans that students bought, but never paid for?
Ms. Weiss: Correct.
Dr. Copelton: A quick clarification, so the students that live on campus are required to
purchase a meal plan, but they have of a choice of any of the meal plans or is it just the larger
ones?
Ms. Weiss: First and second year students have to buy the unlimited meal or the 14 meals a
week plan. If they are not in the Townhomes, after that they can pick any meal plan, residents in the Townhomes do not have to have a meal plan.
Dr. Bloom: What does “straight DB” mean on the other schools’ meal plans?
Ms. Weiss: It means declining balance. You pay the price of the plan and when it’s gone, it’s
gone.
Dr. Copelton: I am curious as two other colleges have the declining balance meal plans,
whereas ours is based on number of swipes. I am curious if you have looked at that as an
alternative model?
Ms. Weiss: We had it before. If you look at those other plans, this one for example, you are
paying $2662 and right off the bat they take $300 off for overhead costs and then you are only
getting $2362 to spend. When it’s gone, it’s gone. When total cost of attendance is such a
concern, really truly the best value you can have is the style meal plan that we offer. If you are on the unlimited meal plan, there is no reason why you shouldn’t have access to food. What happens with the declining balances is they run out of money. Our satisfaction surveys shows the campus likes it, they are pleased with it, and they use it.
Ms. Major: I have been at schools where they have those plans and they end up with more bad debt for the college, because when the student runs out of dollars in the middle of semester they come to Student Accounts and add more to their student account so they can eat again, but then they never pay that balance and the bad debt goes up.
Ms. Hintz: We recently did a focus group and the students said they really like the unlimited
plan because it is so flexible and they can come and go as they please.
Brockport Student Government (BSG)
Presented by Ms. Chantelle Nasri, BSG Treasurer
Dr. Copelton: So, just so I am clear, the Collaboration Initiative is basically other departments, programs, and organizations can ask BSG to co-sponsor an event?
Ms. Nasri: Yes, we won’t pay fully for it but we will subsidize cost and it is a great way for us to get out there in different areas of campus, as well as for other areas of campus to come and work with us.
Dr. Bhadury: The online piece of the Stylus is going to be available online or it is available
online?
Ms. Nasri: It is already available online. Actually, they release the online version on Tuesday
and the print version is available on Wednesday. So, you can actually read it ahead of time. I
have worked with their marketing team to do some special releases solely online to bring some more traffic to their website.
Dr. Haynes: Why the decision so far to keep printing?
Ms. Nasri: I think that from a marketing standpoint, I think it is different when something is in your face instead of having to do extra legwork to get it. I think the Stylus has done a very
conscious job of trying to make sure they report things on all areas of the campus. I think it is a very important piece of information that students are given once a week but I also saw it as
something that is hurting our budget, because they print so much and it is so costly per issue.
So, if we could just reduce that a little bit and even they could develop an app so it could be a
mobile piece of information instead of having to go pick it up.
Dr. Bhadury: What is the weekly circulation of the Stylus?
Ms. Nasri: How many? I don’t know the exact weekly number, I know the semester number.
They do about 1450 an issue and they do it 22 weeks a semester. They print consciously enough to be able to distribute in all areas of the campus.
Dr. Bhadury: That is how much they print; I am talking about how many are actually picked up.
Ms. Nasri: That is a metric of assessment that can be done by their staff.
Other Items from the Committee
Dr. Copelton reminded members that the major agenda item at next week’s meeting is our
response to the division presentations. If members have ideas on how they would like to respond to the various division requests, please send them Dr. Copelton via email so that they can be compiled and sent out with the meeting materials.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:25 a.m.
Next Meeting: May 3, 2018, 8:30-10:30 AM
DC/LS/mw