Several top administrators at Ohio University will venture back into Walter Hall on Wednesday night to interact with OU’s elected student representatives for the second time this semester.
Student Senate will welcome Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit and Vice President for Finance and Administration Stephen Golding to its meeting in Walter Hall 235 at 7:15 p.m. to listen to and take questions from the body.
Benoit and Golding will be presenting on Responsibility Centered Management, a new budgeting model that entrusts academic leaders with more control of financial resources, leading to more informed decision-making and better results or outcomes for the university as a whole, according to OU’s website.
They will also be speaking about alternative funding methods for colleges, such as flat fees and fixed tuition rates, said Student Senate President Zach George, adding that university debt will also be discussed.
“To me, the biggest concern is transparency, how all this functions,” George said. “A lot of people don’t understand how this debt function is going to work.”
Despite needing clarification on the debt, George said he believes OU’s Capital Improvement Plan will benefit OU students during the next 10 to 15 years.
“We are talking about tuition at the next Student Senate meeting,” Benoit said. “Various concepts and ideas and differential tuition. We will talk about places that have gone with differential models of tuition and explain to the senate what that means and the advantages and disadvantages to those models. We will talk about all different concepts of tuition.”
Benoit said that she expects John Day, associate provost for academic budget and planning, and Chad Mitchell, budget director of finance, to be at the meeting as well.
“I’m glad they’re coming back,” said Jared Henderson, academic affairs commissioner. “I still have hard feelings about the way the last meeting went. I hope this doesn’t follow the same trajectory.”
dd195710@ohiou.edu
