Frequently Asked Tech Fee Questions

Each proposal is required to have all quotes attached by the submission deadline otherwise the proposal will not be accepted. Also, incomplete proposal form submissions will not be accepted.

The committee will ask for clarifications of each proposal as needed. The questions will come from OnBase via email with a link to answer the question. Please answer those as soon as possible. If the questions are not answered by the deadline your proposal award consideration may be negatively impacted.

Awarded money is to be spent on the quoted materials only. If the particular vendor no longer has the requested item available another vendor may be used.

The money awarded will be available until the end of the semester cycle. For example, spring awards must be spent by the end of the following fall semester. Fall awards must be spent by the end of the following summer semester. Dates will be given in your award letter.

Institutional standards have been established in several areas to optimize total cost of ownership, maximize support, and promote ease of use. State purchasing agreements or requirements may also be applicable in some circumstances. The technology fee committee leans strongly toward encouraging institution-wide or department-wide standards as appropriate. Areas of concern include projectors, Smartboards, servers, workstations and laptops, and digital signage. In these cases please consult with appropriate IT staff.

• Proposals are evaluated in a multi-step process. Committee members are expected to read every proposal and have an opportunity to convey questions about any proposal to the proposal writer. All questions that are asked about a specific proposal are sent to the proposal writer with a deadline to respond. Responses are conveyed to committee members after the deadline. Each committee member scores every proposal in which they do not have a vested interest based on a scoring method developed and approved over several years by the committee. Scores are totaled, normalized, and ranked in several ways and the results distributed to the committee at their proposal evaluation meeting. It is important to note that scores are not used as the primary basis to award funding but are used to provide a framework for discussion and to uncover differing perspectives about proposals, especially between student and faculty members of the committee.
• Every proposal that is submitted is discussed at the proposal evaluation meeting unless the committee concludes that a proposal does not qualify to receive tech fee funds or if the guidelines or requirements of the RFP for that semester were not followed. Most often, the committee will discuss proposals ranked from first to last, but alternating between student rank and faculty rank. For example, student #1 will be followed by faculty #1, etc. The order in which proposals are discussed has varied, however, based on the circumstances of any given semester. If there is some significant discrepancy between student and faculty rankings, then the alternating method is typically used. Smaller proposals have sometimes been discussed first, and other times lower scoring proposals have been discussed first.
• As proposals are discussed, funding recommendations are made that may include full, partial, or no funding. The committee attempts to optimize the use of funds and may often partially fund proposals for this reason. Sometimes funding is not provided because the committee feels that a convincing case for funding has not been made and sometimes it is simply because no funds were available after funding other priorities.

• A primary reason to have a committee, of course, is to have different perspectives represented and discussed and to reach a consensus or at least a majority decision about issues it considers. Committee members are obligated to

  • Adhere to the requirements specified in the technology fee guidelines
  • Interpret guidelines where appropriate and evaluate proposals within the context of the guidelines
  • Evaluate proposals per the requirements set forth in the current semester proposal

  Individual committee members, of course, may prioritize and weigh issues differently based on funds available, institutional or departmental priorities, enrollment, and a host of other factors. Some issues and questions that individual committee members often consider relevant:

  • How many students are impacted or served in a defined period of time (semester, year, summer, specific activity, etc.) by the proposed use of funds?
  • How accessible is the requested technology?
  • Is there a direct or “in-kind” match?
  • Are there letters of support from the Department Head and/or Dean?
  • What will be the “return on investment”?
  • What is the life cycle of the requested resources?
  • What is the justification for this life cycle if it is unusual?
  • What is the replacement plan and cycle?
  • What data are being presented to justify the request?
  • If this is a fairly large request, has there been a pilot project to test the concept? If not, why?
  • Are the courses involved in the request core or distributed core requirements?
  • Are the courses involved in the request required courses within an option? If not, explain their unique importance to help justify the request
  • How does this impact the underlying network or computing infrastructure?
  • Will this require new types or levels of administration or support? If so, how will it be provided?
  • What other resources are or will be made available to provide for this project?
  • Are grants or other funding sources being pursued?