A–6 STANDING COMMITTEES Academic and Student Affairs Committee

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Provost Advisory Committee for Students (PACS): The All College Council Meeting and Research Memos INFORMATION This item is being presented for information only. BACKGROUND This presentation is a report to the Board of Regents by this year’s Chair (Kevin Celustka) and Vice Chair (Julien Ishibashi) of the Provost Advisory Committee for Students (PACS). The information included in this document will be covered in an oral presentation and discussion, and the critical background information is contained primarily in two attachments: the first is an overview of conclusions to research memos produced by teams of PACS members throughout the year on a variety of topics selected by the Provost. The second is brief document which outlines new steps towards the development of College Councils through a quarterly meeting to facilitate trainings and the exchange of information between councils. Attachments

1. Introduction of the Research Memo 2. The First All College Council Meeting 3. Presenters’ Biographical Information

Introduction of the Research Memo The 2016-2017 Provost Advisory Committee for Students (PACS) implemented a memo-based process for research and discussion of topics pertinent to the work of the Provost. The goal of this individual research and peer-presentation model was to improve engagement during discussions and increase the depth of understanding of these topics among specific committee members. The Provost decided on six topics for PACS members to address throughout the year: Financial Aid, Graduate Education, Fee-Based Programs, Capital Planning, 5 - 10 Year Financial Planning, and Tuition. Process: Teams of two members were assigned a topic, which included a list of questions from the Provost to explore. PACS members were connected via the Provost to administrators relevant to their topic, who they met with independently to inform their research. As the result of this research, PACS members drafted a memo which provided background, consideration of university interests, questions / themes of priority, and recommended policy options. After discussing the memos during a PACS meeting, with both Provost Baldasty and relevant administrators present to answer questions, conclusion statements were collectively drafted and approved by a majority vote among present PACS members. These conclusions are not intended to represent official student opinion on these topics, however they do provide carefully considered student perspectives regarding challenges and opportunities for the University of Washington.

Financial Aid: The UW is successful in supplementing the State Need Grant to ensure our students are fully funded. This allows our undergraduate students to graduate with debt levels and default rates below the national average. PACS discussed the need to balance funding between the Husky Promise and other critical student services. When considering these balances, we prioritized equity and access, especially on Tacoma and Bothell campuses. While resources exist, there is still a disparate impact on students that come from the lowest income bracket, resulting in higher debt levels at graduation. PACS also finds that graduate students face many unique challenges with student debt as well as financial aid. In order to make current funding practices more sustainable, PACS recommends the following:

● Financial Aid and Advancement partner to create sustainable campaigns that produce

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large amounts of private scholarships. ● Coordinate with UW External Relations to prioritize fully funding the Student Need

Grant to ensure Husky Promise money is accessible for other purposes and that lower-income/most needy students are protected.

● Create a student advisory committee, comprised of Financial Aid staff and students to explore the compromise between offering more financial aid or providing more social services to students on campus to promote retention.

Graduate Education Given economic trends and the push toward STEM fields, there are some pressing concerns regarding the value and future of graduate school. PACS analyzed how to increase the salience of a graduate education, how to broaden soft skill sets through interdisciplinarity, and how to improve funding for graduate education. PACS finds that the current university culture does not always encourage interdisciplinarity, especially at the graduate level. PACS discussed solutions to cultural obstacles which may prevent the furthering of interdisciplinarity across campus. These solutions should be crafted with intention and forethought rather than in response to departmental constraints. As the decision-making for many of the proposals occurs at different levels, PACS proposes the following:

● Provost set aside discretionary funds to be used for revamping or developing new curricula specifically for interdisciplinarity.

● Departments and students pursue cross-departmental collaboration in order to enhance both research and pedagogy.

● Faculty Council reassess tenure requirements to add greater emphasis on interdisciplinary research and teaching.

● Individual schools and colleges continue to explore and implement opportunities for direct to college admissions.

Fee-Based Programs: Fee-based programs serve a unique and necessary purpose at the University of Washington. Nonetheless, there remains a need for more uniformly distributed information—such as that provided to relevant advisors, faculty, and staff. Additionally, itemized breakdowns of costs, the creation and/or maintenance of electronic systems for application and payment, and improved

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communication over speculated or tangible changes to cost or quality of education would all greatly improve transparency, and consequently, student experience. PACS encourages the university to refine the process for the creation of new fee-based programs to improve the consideration of financial burden on students. PACS recognizes that students in Fee-Based programs have limited access to financial aid and on-campus employment compared to tuition-based students, and recommends the university explore ways to provide more financial support for fee-based students.

Capital Planning As the UW administration seeks to address the $1 billion backlog of deferred maintenance projects, create policies that will efficiently and fairly allocate classroom use, and prioritize new capital projects, PACS recognizes the administration’s interest in and efforts to engage students on this complex topic and provide transparency on the decision-making process. PACS provides the following recommendations the Provost and University leadership: Recognize that spaces are critical for learning, defining the Husky experience, and creating an inclusive campus culture. As decisions are made about new capital projects, renovations, other maintenance or classroom use, the administration should consider ways to maintain balanced access to quality learning spaces for all students regardless of the popularity of their academic discipline. New capital projects should strive to include some general use classrooms that all academic disciplines can use. The administration should also clarify policies to ensure that the use of every building that UW owns is governed by the classroom scheduling rules, rather than giving extreme preference to a discipline that helped raise the money for a specific building. Create more mechanisms to gather student feedback to help direct capital planning and deferred maintenance decisions to the areas that are most impactful in supporting the student experience. These mechanisms may include: Adding a question to all course evaluations asking how the physical classroom shaped students’ learning experience. Allowing students and administration to work together (e.g. working group, faculty council) to identify the best ways to convey the relevance of these issues to stakeholders, clearly communicate project timelines and priorities, and help encourage them to give actionable input on upcoming capital project decisions

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Challenge advancement to research new strategies to attract donor dollars to capital projects that will benefit disciplines that have struggled to obtain state investment.

5 - 10 Year Financial Planning PACS encourages the University of Washington and students at the UW to examine and learn from the projects that have come before their time. We hope that students recognize that we stand on the shoulders of our predecessors and that in order to further our institution as a whole, we need to invest in our future. We also hope to encourage students to see themselves as stakeholders at this institution and join in on efforts to solve these larger problems. This could mean taking on projects that will not come to fruition until after they’ve graduated in addition to traditional short-term projects. PACS also recommends that the University make efforts to make the process of long-term project planning (e.g. prioritization, development, and funding) more transparent, and create a medium for understanding the variety of long-term investments the University is making/will make that will benefit the entire institution. Generating student support for these projects through education is essential to creating a dialogue that promotes shared governance beyond the traditional scope of student-related issues. As the result of this conversation, representatives from the ASUW are discussing the development of a Case Competition utilizing student expertise to create innovative solutions to administrative challenges (working alongside Vice President Denzil Suite and UW Co-Motion). We encourage the University Administration to support the development of this program and others that align with these important goals.

Tuition Over the past decade, tuition has become increasingly unaffordable, despite the recent tuition reduction in 2015. PACS discussed the unique Washington State history regarding tuition setting policies, and sees opportunity for an approach to tuition setting that further includes student opinion. PACS supports setting tuition levels that reflect a balance between ability to pay and access to aid. PACS recommends:

● Creating a UW-specific metric for affordability, in collaboration with students, that includes factors such as tuition and other costs, expected student contribution, debt

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thresholds, and financial aid opportunities. When making decisions about when to increase tuition, this metric should be used as a tool in evaluating the impact on students’ ability to access UW and succeed throughout their Husky Experience.

● Acknowledging state law currently prevents differential tuition, PACS supports re-engaging in conversations to explore it as a funding model for fiscal sustainability.

● Creating transparent university guidelines for determining appropriate and predictable raises in tuition. This is especially important for graduate and nonresident students.

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The First All College Council Meeting In January 2017, the PACS Chair began hosting quarterly meetings between the membership of each academic unit’s student budgetary advisory group, commonly referred to as college councils. The All College Council (ACC) Meeting was created to provide an unprecedented opportunity to communicate both advice and current information to and between college councils. The structure is likely to grow and take more formal shape in the coming years. The first ACC meeting in January of this year was attended by more than 40 students, representing more than a dozen college councils and members of the PACS. During this meeting, council leadership expressed an interest in continuing the ACC Meetings, and we collectively generated ideas of what this format might look like in the future. Since January, the ACC has:

● Shared contact information among newly elected college council leadership ● Created a Google Drive for sharing documents including bylaws, policy templates, best

practices, UW budget orientations, etc. ● Planned a Budget 101 workshop for Fall 2017

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Presenters’ Biographical Information Provost Advisory Committee for Students (PACS) Annual Update: The All College Council and Policy Memos

Kevin B Celustka PACS Chair, 2016 - 2017 Kevin Celustka is this year’s Chair of the Provost Advisory Committee for Students (PACS) and a fourth-year undergraduate student in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He also serves as a member of the Services and Activities Fee (SAF) committee. Kevin has formerly served as the ASUW Student Senate Chair, ASUW Senate Vice Chair, and ASUW UW Leaders Mentor. Kevin currently works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research center as a Research Assistant for Dr. Steven Pergam, where he will transition to a full-time position after graduation in June 2017. His academic and professional interests lie in the intersection of data-driven global health strategy and impactful

development policy. Kevin is originally from Wenatchee, Washington, but lived in Belgium for one year before coming to the UW. In his free-time, Kevin enjoys coffee, photography, travel, and live music.

Julien Ishibashi PACS Vice Chair, 2016 - 2017 Julien Ishibashi is the current Vice Chair of the Provost Advisory Committee for Students (PACS). They are also a third-year undergraduate studying Biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle. Outside of the President’s Conference Room, Julien is Vice Chair of the Vice President for Minority Affairs and Diversity’s Student Advisory Board (SAB). They also serve as President of the Psi Chapter of Delta Lambda Phi Social Fraternity, and as an officer for the Queer People of Color Alliance (QPoCA). Their post-grad interests include bioethics and biomedical policy. Julien calls foggy San Francisco, CA home, but has found a second home as a husky on one of the most beautiful

campuses in the world. In their free time, Julien enjoys cooking pulled pork, eating Russian pastries, and jogging in the refreshing Seattle rain.

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