Present: Qudus Bawa-allah, Eileen Daniel, Peter Dowe, Michael Harrison, Crystal Hallenbeck-McPhall – Co-chair, Rachael Killion, Susan Lowey, Nicole Parkison, Logan Rath – Co-chair, Lisa Robusto-Mack, Rongkun Shen
Regrets: Lorraine Acker, Teresa Major
Guest: Dr. Kimberley Willis
Welcome and Introductions
Committee members were welcomed, along with Dr. Kimberley Willis, The Director of Financial Aid. Dr. Willis was invited to the meeting today to discuss the course fee hardship waiver process.
Mr. Dowe was recognized and thanked for his expertise and service to the committee. With his upcoming retirement date, this is likely his last meeting and he will be missed.
Discussion of Hardship Waiver
The purpose of discussing the course fee hardship waiver was to develop a general understanding of how this process works on our campus. The process, policy, and waiver form have been in place for approximately a year now. The MachForm is housed on the Registration and Records website. Review of a hardship waiver application is completed by the Financial Aid Office. Financial Aid then communicates any approvals to the Office of Student Accounts and Accounting for action on the approved student’s account.
Why is this process being discussed?
- Review of the course fee hardship waiver process is part of the Campus Based Fee Review Committee’s charge.
- SUNY has again questioned our process for waiving course fees. This mainly surrounded an increase in one of our Nursing fees.
Questions addressed
- How does a student know there is an option for a course fee hardship waiver?
- How does a student know to go to the Registration & Records website to find the hardship waiver application?
- How do they express a need for a course fee hardship waiver? Do they mainly communicate this via the Financial Aid Office?
General background provided by Dr. Willis
The original process was developed by a small group including representation from The Financial Aid Office, The Office of Student Accounts and Accounting, and Registration and Records. Through the discussions of this group, it was decided to create a MachForm application and house it on the Registration and Records website. Posting the application here is our form of communication to students. There is no mass outreach of any kind or email announcement that is distributed. The intent was to make the waiver available to students, but not make the process so public that everyone applied. This process and the waiver of course fees are intended for exceptions and specific needs. Not all applications are approved. For any that are approved, there needs to be a demonstrated need. If the student has additional monies available on their account (i.e. Financial Aid), the requested course fee waiver is not approved. There is not a demonstrated hardship because there is funding available to pay the fee.
The main tool to assess whether or not a waiver is approved is the student’s account. The fees they are requesting a waiver for are reviewed. The students’ answers on the waiver application are also considered. One question asks if they have applied for all financial aid (federal and state). If they answer no to this question, they have potentially not used all the resources available to them to cover these fees. This would be a factor in denying this request.
Throughout the year this process has been in place, there have been waiver requests, and some have been approved.
Committee discussion and further questions posed
- Do we believe the Registration and Records website is the best place to house this application?
- Do we need to communicate the waiver process more widely?
- Is there a better place to house this application and/or a better way to communicate its availability? For example, with SUNY’s concern over the increased Nursing fee, should the waiver application somehow be linked to the course; maybe via the course catalog?
Ms. Parkison presented her thoughts. Throughout her UG years she commented on not knowing this process existed. She understood the concerns over sharing this process widely with students, but added there may be value in sharing this process widely amongst professors and the ASC. These two groups have the ability to direct students to available resources. She also suggested that the application be moved from the Registration and Records website to the Financial Aid website. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall acknowledged that these were good ideas and that they would be documented.
Dr. Daniel shared some of Ms. Parkison’s thoughts. She expressed concern about having great opportunities to support students that students are not aware of. She used the Golden Eagle Scholarship Fund as an example. Dr. Daniel also shared Dr. Willis’ thoughts that we do not want to imply that everybody’s hardship will be automatically waived. Recognizing this, she still felt that we may not have a good path currently to let those with a true need know about the opportunity to apply for a hardship waiver.
Dr. Willis acknowledged these thoughts, but felt that it was not Financial Aid’s responsibility to put this information out there. She reminded the committee that she is only one of the decision makers in the waiver approval process. It is a team effort to review any application and the corresponding student account. She also recognized that it is not her fee to waive, so felt this was important to take into account when determining the appropriate means of communication. Together, Dr. Willis and Dr. Daniel agreed that it was important that we strategically decide how to communicate this waiver process.
Dr. Rath commented that the process for the course fee hardship waiver seemed fine. He then shared some concerns and thoughts regarding the MachForm. First, there are two website fields at the bottom of the form that need to be removed, as they are blank. Secondly, he recognized that it may not be Financial Aid’s responsibility to communicate this process to students, but suggested the application be added to the Financial Aid website under “Other Types of Aid.” He felt this would assist students in finding the application. It could be possibly labeled “Student Emergency Funds,” and include resources like this waiver process. Dr. Rath did recognize that locating the application here could result in more forms being submitted, and in turn, more work. He felt that the importance of communicating this outweighed the possibility of the extra work because we have a published commitment that we ‘take care of our own.” He pointed out that trying to find the form on the Registration and Records website was very difficult and unclear (located under “important forms” and then, “student information forms). The application seems to be out of place here because it sits with other forms, such as how to change your address and another information form. The wavier application is something totally different. This is at no fault of the Registration and Records Team, as much website reorganization has been occurring.
Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall asked the group if anyone knew what the blank website boxes were for on the MachForm. Mr. Harrison suggested that perhaps it was intended to link the course fee hardship waiver policy here. Nobody else had any recollection, so these fields should likely be deleted. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall will have to look into who created this MachForm and how to initiate needed changes. Dr. Rath suggested working with Ms. Maxwell.
Mr. Bawa-allah commented that he was also unaware of the course fee hardship waiver application, but believed that BSG could help in the communication process. He stated that the BSG team has pretty good lines of communication with the student body and could easily share the availability of this waiver. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall thanked him for this option. Mr. Bawa-allah then asked Dr. Willis if there were any circumstances where a student could get a fee waiver without applying for financial aid. Dr. Willis responded that you had to at least apply and try to get financial aid, not necessarily be awarded. She recognized there are some students who cannot apply for financial aid, so they would be excluded from this population. Everyone else would be directed to the FAFSA process. NYS residents would be directed to the TAP application. Some dialogue then ensured about the timeline of when fees came due versus how long it would take to apply and be awarded aid. It was encouraged that all aid should be applied for prior to the start of a semester.
Dr. Lowey echoed Dr. Rath’s comments regarding the location of the application. She felt that if she were a student looking for assistance with their finances, she would look to the Financial Aid website first to see what options were available. She felt the waiver application should be housed somewhere on this website. When she advises students with financial need, she will either direct them to Financial Aid, Scholarships, or both. It would be good for students to be able to go to the Financial Aid website to see what options are available to them, because many do not know. Dr. Willis was not opposed to the application link being located on the Financial Aid website if that is what the committee felt was best. She did raise concerns over the workload increase this may bring. The feeling was that a lot of students may just apply because they see it’s an available option. She continued, that this waiver is not financial aid and would have an impact on campus revenues.
Reflecting on the conversation, Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall agreed that from her perspective the Registration and Records website was not the best place to house the course fee hardship waiver application. It is very tricky to find, and she agreed with Dr. Lowey, that a student would not necessarily think to go to that website to find the form/related waiver information. She revisited the original discussions regarding this process. Communication on the course fee waiver process had to be a balance. We wanted to recognize the need, but didn’t want the form widely accessible, as waiving course fees has impacts on budgets. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall agreed that moving the form may increase workload for the Financial Aid Team, and may not result if further application approvals due to not meeting required criteria. She proposed the idea of placing the waiver instead within the course catalog/registry. The link could be listed along with the course description and the fee amount details. Mr. Dowe commented that this would require adding the waiver availability statement to every course description that has a course fee. He didn’t know how possible this was and felt that we would be begging for trouble going this route, as waivers are for hardships only. His feeling was that there were many fewer students that would qualify than would apply. He apologized, but felt this would put an undue burden on the student services offices that were involved in the review of these applications. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall understood and concluded that perhaps, that wasn’t the best option. She then stated a struggle with placing the waiver application on the Financial Aid website because it wasn’t truly financial aid.
Dr. Rath put on his equity cap and proposed that there were ways we could shift some of the potential increase in workload to the student. He thought that we could make changes within the MachForm interface, changing the logic, to limit the submissions (i.e. if yes wasn’t selected for certain questions, then the form would stop or wouldn’t submit.) There could be a message after certain questions are asked that triggers, stating the student does not qualify for the hardship waiver. He also suggested that Financial Aid would have access to the responses and would not have to look at those where a student answered no. We could also require certain screenshots to confirm compliance. Dr. Rath brought up the Student Accounts and Accounting website as another potential home for the waiver application. There is a page with a tuition and fee schedule and a chart of all broad-based fees. It currently does not mention a waiver option. If the form were to go here, we would have to be upfront about the required criteria. He referred to communicating this way as “passive education,” meaning not directly reaching out, but giving available options when a student realizes they have a need. They would see fees due and would have a resource to meet the need if they qualified. He felt strongly that we could find ways to reduce the workload from these applications, but also that we needed to fight for the students for whom this waiver could make a difference in their taking a course/coming to Brockport. If resources were needed for Financial Aid, such as another staff member, we should make this argument.
Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall liked the idea of making changes to the MachForm and building in some logic and messaging. She suggested that a subcommittee be created to look at this process and make suggestions. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall then stated she felt it would be deceiving to place the waiver information on the Student Accounts and Accounting website because this is not where course fee information is shared.
Ms. Parkison also agreed with Dr. Rath’s ideas to modify the MachForm. She suggested that possibly student workers would help with the application review process; even if it is just sorting the yes and no piles. Dr. Willis thanked both Ms. Parkison and Dr. Rath for their ideas and Mr. Bawa-allah for his input. She then corrected her earlier statement regarding eligibility for financial aid and a student’s ability to request a waiver. Each approved student must be eligible for financial aid per our policy. She then restated that moving the application to the Financial Aid website could be misleading, but it comes down to continuing to educate our students. She spoke of the great relationship between her team and the Office of Student Accounts and Accounting. Together, if ever special consideration is needed for a student, their teams would evaluate this together. She then agreed that the application could be placed on the Financial Aid website. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall thanked her for this and the committee voted in agreement to move the application to this website.
Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall then facilitated a conversation over the process of moving the application. Dr. Willis stated that the web team could assist. Once the MachForm is updated, she will reach out to have it relocated. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall asked Dr. Rath to assist with the MachForm revisions. Dr. Rath agreed and brought up some further concerns over the Scholarship website. These fall outside of this group’s purview. Ms. Parkison also volunteered to assist with the MachForm changes. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall will call the group together and will notify Dr. Willis once the form has been updated.
Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall had one lingering question that she will follow up on; Do the Student Services Offices routinely communicate to advisors? If there is a routine channel of communication, this could be another avenue for sharing the waiver process.
October 4, 2024, Meeting Summary
Members were asked to review the meeting summary from the October 4, 2024, meeting. Any comments, edits or suggestions should be sent to Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall by November 15, 2024.
Updates to the Committee
- Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall shared that the Annual CBFRC Report was presented to JPBC and was well received. A lot of positive feedback was shared. Questions came up regarding the new course fee rubric. JPBC wanted to know if while we were using this new form and looking at fees, if we were considering the total cost of attendance to a student. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall recognized that this was originally a question on our rubric, but that the committee felt it was a hard thing to assess. She believes this is a great question and something that CBFRC needs to continue to look at, recognizing the challenges of this assessment. She then asked for thoughts from the committee; how does CBFRC continue to consider cost of attendance to our students as we are approving fees?
- Mr. Bawa-allah commented that perhaps cost of attendance be evaluated based upon the program someone is going into. He pointed out that each academic program has a website that outlines potential cost.
- Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall asked Ms. Killion if we should place this question more so on the fee requestor. We could ask what the total expected cost of attendance for their program is and what the expected increase would be with a new fee. Ms. Killion responded that the ability to do this depends a lot on the course fee being requested. Some requests are for things such as generic lab fees, that someone may be taking as a general education requirement. Being a general education requirement, the program might not consider that as part of the cost of attendance because it may have been taken prior to the student being enrolled in the program. She stated it depends on how we want to look at this and there are many variables to consider. Ms. Killion was to put out some feelers to fee managers to see if they have any thoughts on this. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall agreed that we start there and bring this topic up again for future consideration.
- JPBC also brought up the fact that we have more online courses and had concerns about fee assessment in general for these programs. They also had some concerns about the fee assessment process. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall shared that she mentioned CBFRC has already done some work in this area and will continue this work into the spring semester. As these conversations continue, CBFRC was asked to consider fees and service levels to students and how this impacts retention.
- Overall, the conversation with JPBC was positive and Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall thanked the committee for all their hard work.
Campus Fee Registry
Ms. Killion provided an update on the SUNY fee registry. This is submitted to SUNY in a cycle. Every year the course fee registry is submitted and every other year, is our exhaustive list of all fees. The fee registry spreadsheet was shared and reviewed with the committee. A walkthrough of the different tabs was conducted. It was noted that SUNY has made some process changes. This year they have inquired if all course fees are going into the same account or if the revenues from these fees is being split into multiple accounts. They also asked about inclusive access, which our campus does not do.
It was noted that broad-based fees did not change last fiscal year, so there were no changes to update in the current course fee register for this.
Ms. Killion is very transparent about our fees and reports any changes to SUNY (i.e. international student fee, course fee, and campus authorized fee changes).
Next Meeting
- Members will review agenda items not completed today due to time constraints.
- A response to JPBC was drafted by Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall regarding the CBFRC’s feedback on Nursing course fees. She asked the committee to review this document and provide any feedback by Friday, November 15th. Feedback was requested via email, but if anything material is changed, the draft will be re-presented to the committee.
- Next projects of importance:
- Broad-based fee call letter – to be reviewed at next meeting. A meeting will be scheduled for Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall, Dr. Rath, and Ms. Killion to discuss and create a draft.
- Fee Assessment – discussion of the current process.
- Internation Insurance fees – a deep dive into this account and the activities posted here. Documents were shared to help facilitate this conversation. The committee was asked to take a few minutes to review these items. The question is how has this account built up such a large balance and how can we spend it down. Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall and Ms. Killion will review expenses to ensure that all are posted to the correct account. The program director will be invited to a future meeting to give more context.
Other Items from the Committee
None at this time.
Campus Based Fee Review Committee Action Plan List
Committee Members: Lorraine Acker/Qudus Bawa-allah/Eileen Daniel/Peter Dowe/Crystal Hallenbeck-McPhall/Michael Harrison/ Rachael Killion/Susan Lowey/Teresa Major/Nicole Parkison/Logan Rath/Lisa Robusto-Mack/Rongkun Shen
Committee Roster
| Action | Responsible | Status | Deadline | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Put a call out to GA/Tas for Graduate Student representative. | Mr. Harrison | Completed | N/A | N/A |
| Request BSG Treasurer to attend as Undergraduate Student representative | Dr. Acker | Completed | N/A | N/A |
ID Replacement Fee
| Action | Responsible | Status | Deadline | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Follow up with Ms. Frosini and obtain more data. | Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall | Completed | N/A | N/A |
Nursing Course Fee Review
| Action | Responsible | Status | Deadline | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Review Nursing course fees | All | Completed | N/A | N/A |
2023-24 Annual Report
| Action | Responsible | Status | Deadline | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create the 2023-24 Annual Report | Dr. Hallenbeck-McPhall | Completed | N/A | N/A |