STFC opened up annual allocations for next fiscal year
The Student Technology Fee Committee has started accepting request forms for the next fiscal year’s budget. Based on last year’s budget, STFC will have around $420,000 ready for allocations. Submissions for the annual allocations opened up at the end of January, and requests will be accepted until Feb. 28.
STFC is a committee whose voting members are all UW Tacoma students, with some administrators serving the committee in non-voting roles. The committee is comprised of eight students ranging from freshmen to seniors, and whose majors vary from computer science, psychology, business, mathematics and interdisciplinary arts and sciences. The Associated Students of the University of Washington Tacoma Director of Technology, this year John Nguyen, serves as the chairperson for the committee and serves as the direct liaison between the committee and ASUWT.
“So on the committee, I tried to be diverse,” said Nguyen, who has the responsibility of hiring committee members. “It’s not just about technology majors. Everyone thinks it’s just IT and C[omputer] S[cience] majors, but it’s not. I want people from different schools to represent their school. Whether you’re an art student or a business student, you’re going to need some sort of technology … We all have different technology needs.”
Once all of the requests are in, the committee will look over them and decide if the request should be approved or denied. In previous years, most submitted requests were approved by the committee.
The committee’s maximum budget is based on the collection of the technology fee every student pays each quarter. Full-time students at UWT pay a technology fee of $40 every quarter. For comparison, UW Seattle students have a technology fee of $38 a quarter, and UW Bothell students pay $42 a quarter.
The technology fee is used to help pay for one-time technology purchases, such as computers, computer equipment, printers and scanners, audio-visual equipment and multimedia learning equipment, among other items.
When asked if he believed the committee was ready to take on the challenge of going through the requests and setting up next year’s budget, Nguyen explained that the students were already prepared.
“I think anyone, as a student who walks through and interacts with this school, you’re just prepared off of just that,” Nguyen said. “Because you understand what you need in order to succeed in school … I think being prepared, in this case, it is just being a student, interacting with campus, walking and talking around, and because of that I think they’re really prepared.”
STFC Voting Members
| Name | Major | Class Standing |
| John Nguyen – Chair | Computer Science | Senior |
| April Vo | IAS | Senior |
| Kaylynn Nguyen | Pre-major | Freshman |
| Nolan Hibbard-Pelly | Mathematics | Sophomore |
| Vanessa Sundits | Technical Communications | Junior |
| Aidan Helt | Business | Junior |
| Islam Alsinai | Psychology | Senior |
| Sean Graves | Urban Studies | Freshman |
