Skip to content
Fee Transparency Project
Companion to the official sfac.ucsc.edu (opens in new tab) · About this site

February 23rd, 2026

2:30 – 4:00 pmJoin Zoom (opens in new tab)

AgendaMinutes

Present: Marshall, Mel, Arielle, Trey, Aims, Laila, Lyra, Lucy, Nicholas, Lisa, Cheryl, John, Vir, Maya, Aims, Sofia, Sezona

Guest: Student Michael Andrew

  1. [2:30 - 2:33] Welcome and Introductions
    1. Members' introductions: Name, Pronouns, Year, Major, and Space.
    2. Order: Cowell, Stevenson, Crown, Merrill, Kresge, Porter, Oakes, RCC, C9, JRL, Graduate Students, SAB, Provost, SUA, Lisa, Sezona, Lucy
  2. [2:33 - 2:35] Approval of the Agenda and Minutes
    1. Approval of 2/9/26 Agenda and 2/23/26 Agenda
    2. Approval of February 2, 2026 Minutes and February 9, 2026 Minutes
      1. Approved by unanimous consent
  3. [2:35 - 2:40] Announcements & Updates
    1. Debrief CSF Meeting
      1. Agenda
      2. CSF Notes
      3. CSF Notes
      4. CSF Notes
      5. CSF Post
        1. Mel has developed a social media post to highlight the CSF meeting.
        2. Marshall explains that the main topic at CSF was review and making proposed revisions to the SSF guidelines. Attendees at the meeting provide feedback and suggested edits, then those edits will go to UCOP for review, and then it would go to CSF executive board for final review.
    2. Assignments for review of campus-based fees
      1. Basic Needs Fee: Nicholas, Trey, Sezona
      2. Learning Support Services Fee Increase: Angelina, Arielle, Lyra, Cheryl
      3. Right Livelihood Fee: Sofia, Laila, Vir
      4. Floating and Supporting: Marshall and Mel
      5. Shout out to Angelina for all of her work on this project.
    3. Review the results of student survey
      1. Discussion on next steps and who will work on generating a summary of the findings.
      2. Marshall offers to code the data to make it more useful to members.
  4. SFAC Chair/Vice-Chair Reports
    1. Chair
      1. TODO
    2. Vice-Chair
      1. We have started planning for Spring CSF
        1. Our request to use the Cultural Center at Merrill has been approved for April 11th & 12th
        2. We attended CSF and have decided the Spring Meeting will be a summit, and every campus will lead a breakout session.
  5. Subcommittee Reports
    1. Audit
      1. Drafted framework on pausing/reducing fees, reflecting SFAC’s stance
        1. Lucy suggests check in with Lisa - she drafted something a few years ago that could be a possible resource for the group.
      2. Began unit interviews
      3. Accessed and identified concerning trends in budgets
      4. Starting to draft unit reports now, identifying new units to interview
      5. Goal: reach UCLA level of auditing every unit, every year (especially considering we’re not running the funding call next year)
        1. We’re figuring out what works this year as we streamline that process
    2. Outreach
      1. We presented at the SUA on the SFAC Student Survey on Campus Values
      2. Continued to post SFAC Member Mondays when appropriate to post (Agelina)
      3. Continuing to post Fee of The Week Posts to educate students about fee measures (Sophia)
      4. Find projects for those in the committee
        1. Nick- will contact student clubs for SFAC to present and introduce ourselves
        2. Cheryl- will contact organizations/departments that have been previously funded by SFAC to see how the event/program we funded went
      5. I believe we have successfully rebranded the SFAC Instagram
      6. Outreach has only met a couple of times this quarter due to scheduling conflicts, and there being 0 available times for the entire committee to meet
      7. Next quarter, we have big plans!
  6. [2:40 - 2:45] Summer 2026 Campus-Based Fees
    1. Proposed Fees
    2. Lisa explains that it’s time to review the proposed fees for this year’s summer session. On the spreadsheet, the changes are noted in light blue.
    3. Proposed Summer Fees were unanimously approved for recommendation to the Vice Chancellor.
  7. [2:45 - 2:55] SSF role in funding academic research
    1. https://www.ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/fees/documents/stuservicesfeeguide.pdf
      1. Marshall states that SSF should be used on things endorsed by a campus SFAC and should not be used to support units traditionally relying on state funds
      2. Could open the door to future research labs, augmenting state and federal funds by relying on SSF if we continue to endorse it
        1. Discussion regarding the appropriateness of SSF for this proposal. The group reviews the application and additional information provided by the proposal's author.
        2. A suggestion was made to continue reviewing next week after everyone has reviewed the proposal further.
        3. Question: Do we want to endorse this activity (e.g., research).
    2. Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget Report
      1. https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wordpress.ucsc.edu/dist/2/115/files/2026/01/CPB-Annual-Report-2024-25_SCP2138.pdf
      2. State cuts were backloaded and so while many others have implemented major cuts, academic divisions are just starting to
      3. State's future costs are expected to go up
    3. Summary and recommendation
    4. Voting on appeal
      1. Tabled to next week
  8. [2:55 - 3:10] Discussion: Consolidated Shared Services Assessment
    1. https://planning.ucsc.edu/models-assessments/administration-service-assessments/
      1. We anticipate there will be a lot of inquiries from students about this
      2. Question - Is Measure 7 being treated as a campus-based fee or core fund for the purposes of CSSA?
      3. What about campus-based fees that didn’t have Information User fees, like a facility fee?
      4. Students are asking how the university can start charging the fee in a different way than originally planned.
      5. The group would like to continue discussing this topic in the future.
    2. SFAC Response
  9. [3:10 - 3:20] Debrief Visit with Executive Director Dan Henderson, TAPS
    1. FOLDER with materials provided by Dan, including slide deck
    2. Develop a recommendation for the Chancellor
    3. Table for the next meeting
  10. [3:20 - 3:30] Debrief Visit with Chancellor Larive
    1. Discuss the proposed policy on reducing campus-based fees
    2. Table for our next meeting
  11. [3:30 - 4:00] Proposed Campus-Based Fee Presentations
    1. Learning Support Services Fee Increase
      1. Guest: Lexie Tapke, Assistant Director of Learning Support Services
        1. The group begins with introductions
      2. Ballot Statement
      3. Budget for Fee Increase
      4. LSS Operating Budget
      5. Presentation
        1. Link to Presentation
        2. Serves over 3400 students and 100 courses per quarter
        3. Hire and train 150 undergraduate students each year as certified tutors.
        4. Survey data suggest that students received more than just academic support from LLS, developing a sense of belonging and developing mentor relationships with their tutor.
        5. Data demonstrates that student success consistently increases with participation in LLS.
        6. Funding is not keeping up with demand from students.
      6. SFAC asks that the testimonials be shared after the meeting.
      7. Questions:
        1. What warrants increases every three years? Why $2 and not tied to inflation? This was calculated based on projected need. Lexie will bring back the idea of a % increase to the team.
        2. Budget documents assume no growth in enrollment. How will the fee be managed if enrollment grows? Open to inflationary cap? They have been discussing a cap, so Lexie welcomes the feedback. Five years is based on the expanding services, such as a wait list request form. If there is interest in a course that does not have a tutor, they would be able to consider expanding it. They would go back to supporting courses that they had to cut (they had to cut 50 positions last fall). Wages have increased. They have been asked to consider expansion into the humanities, for example. There are also services that are not tied to classes/ (peer coaching and study hall).
        3. Are Winter 2026, one-time funds from HSI and Retention and Validation, supporting hiring back student positions that were cut in the fall?
        4. Would one-time funds be available again in the future? Lexie says that LSS is hopeful, but it would depend on trends that LSS sees (how they choose which courses to support, based on D, F, W rates and equity gaps).
        5. Are there alternate funding sources available to LSS? They have applied to SFAC in the past for grants, etc. The challenge is to innovate services - we are focused on sustaining.
        6. How do you plan to advertise services to students not use these services once you do have the funding to fulfill current demand? We are expanding places and ways in which we advertise our services, while the main form of advertisement is word of mouth, LLS has been leaning more into collaborating with professors to directly advertise services to students within the courses supported.
        7. Is there a specific list of majors you would expand services into? The first major that services would be expanded into would be the humanities and social sciences, to support courses like sociology, history, etc.
  12. Meeting adjourned at 4:03 pm

Upcoming Guests/Topics:

  1. Presentations from Referenda Authors - March 2nd (Basic Needs and Right Livelihood)
  2. Potentially SFAC Attending a UC Regents Meeting: March 17th, 2026 @UCSF
  3. Spring CSF Meeting: April 11th -12th
  4. University Registrar Tchad Sanger: Records Fee (late spring 2026)

Meeting and Committee Member Resources:

  1. SFAC Roster
  2. Orientation Materials
  3. Agendas and Minutes
  4. Tracking Sheet for Campus Based Fees ongoing discussion
  5. Google Folder
  6. Summer 26 Fee Levels