University Unions and Student Activities was assessed by outside consultants this week as the group fights to hold operations steady in the face of budget cuts.
Three consultants from the Association of College Unions International spent three days evaluating UUSA, which operates Squires Student Center, Johnston Student Center, the Graduate Life Center and War Memorial Chapel.
The consultants were asked to visit Virginia Tech after UUSA was forced to cut student employment and reduce programs for student activities.
Ed Spencer, vice president for student affairs, arranged for consultants to visit Blacksburg through ACUI's College Union and Student Activities Evaluation Program. The three consultants' three-day visit cost the university between $7,500 and $9,500.
"In the case of UUSA, they've had in recent years some real difficult times with facilities and budget issues," Spencer said. "In all of my years here, looking back, I had a number of questions about structure, organizations, facilities, services, programs, staffing - the whole gamut."
Julie Walters-Steele, director of UUSA, hopes to use the study to lobby for an increased budget.
"One of the things they will look at and be able to help us with is assessing our level of resources compared with peer organizations," Walters-Steele said. "We feel like we need extra resources, but an independent assessment carries more weight."
Spencer hopes the consultants identify ways to shift money within UUSA.
"They may say 'you're over-invested in this area, and you should shift resources to this area,'" Spencer said.
The consultants were student union professionals from other peer universities. Bob Mindrum, director of Purdue University's student union, was the team leader.
"Essentially, these are external reviews," Mindrum said. "It's pretty commonplace. There is any number of reasons why people do an external review. In general, they just see the merit in having experienced outside professionals come in and give them a different perspective on their organization. That's what we were hired to do."
Spencer identified four areas of focus for the consultants: facilities, staffing, programs and services.
During their visit, the consultants met with students and faculty deemed stakeholders in UUSA operations, particularly those with offices and activities in Squires.
"While I wouldn't characterize it as a bunch of people with glowing praise for UUSA and the facilities," Mindrum said, "I think that the very fact that many students chose to come shows a lot of ownership and shows that Squires, for example, is very important to them, and that's a good sign.
One group of stakeholders is UUSA employees. Ashley Brooks, one of the Squires building managers and a senior industrial design major, has worked for UUSA for three-and-a-half years.
She said she had enjoyed working for UUSA, originally as an operations assistant and then operations lead, before being promoted to business manager.
"I liked the idea of working in a student center that was actually run mostly by students," Brooks said. "There were a lot of student employees, and they were really involved."
Brooks said UUSA initially offered advantages that other campus jobs could not provide.
"And for the longest time when I was here, everything was great," Brooks said. "I met a lot of cool people, and they had a lot of great programs to help out their student employees, like leadership development programs. It was a really great opportunity to work on campus while still getting something back from your job besides money."
However, the past year has brought changes at UUSA in the form of budget constraints and personnel changes.
"Everybody had the best intentions with the changes, but because of the budget cuts, combined with how they wanted to make the changes, it hasn't really panned out," Brooks said.
Walters-Steele said many positions had to be cut, and others have been left vacant, including the director of student activities position.
"There have been realignments of duties. Our hope is that we won't have to let go any of our staff employees," Walters-Steele said. "We actually have some of our full-time staff filling in places where we used to have student wage workers."
She said UUSA is not filling any currently vacant positions. Spencer said the university is waiting on the results of the consultants' study before hiring a director of student activities. Others will be eliminated.
"In this economy and with the budget reductions we are facing, there's no way we could go and fill all the positions, so some will remain unfilled," Spencer said.
Operations assistants and leads, positions that previously aided in preparing meeting rooms and closing Squires each night, no longer exist. Brooks said the staff cuts have changed the course of everyday operations.
"They completely cut those people this summer," Brooks said. "Some of those people had just been hired a week or two before they decided to make the cut because they thought they were going to be here for the year. That eliminated about 10 to12 students' jobs."
In previous years, one employee in each position typically aided the building manager in closing Squires each night, giving the building four guaranteed employees to close.
This year, only two people are guaranteed to be closing Squires each night, plus any members of the event staff that may be in the building.
"When you completely cut out the two staff that used to be there every day, you are left with having to cover all of their stuff as well," Brooks said. "They're basically tripling our workload."
Brooks said the information specialist who typically runs the front desk called in sick Wednesday night, and she closed the building by herself.
It was not the first instance of a personnel shortage.
"When you have a couple hundred people coming through a building in a night, a lot of stuff can happen," Brooks said. "They kind of had an eye-opening experience this past weekend because they had an emergency situation come up and I was the only person here besides Brian James with production services and his two people. And if they hadn't been here, I probably wouldn't have been able to handle the situation as well as we did."
Brooks said instability in the UUSA administration's dealing with the financial constraints has limited employees.
"It's been a week-to-week thing. My boss has been trying very hard to keep all of our positions and keep those hours because he knows it's necessary to have more than one person running the facility in the evening," Brooks said. "But unfortunately a lot of the people up in (Room) 225, from what I understand, are just interested in crunching numbers, and they see a bottom line where we need to meet it."
Walters-Steele said UUSA has tried many methods to improve the organization's financial situation, including reducing the air condition in Squires.
"We're looking at a variety of measures where we can save money, and we're also looking at ways we can increase revenue," Walters-Steele said.
She pointed to the new Subway in Johnston Student Center as an attempt to increase revenue.
Brooks said there has been an increased level of consistency in recent weeks.
"It's getting better. For a while when they first made the huge cut, it was really rough," Brooks said. "I had to go to the people up in 225 and say, 'Look, there's no way I can run this building by myself at night,' and so a lot of people are starting to realize we need to look at this as a safety issue and customer service issue."
UUSA addressed some staffing issues by hiring students, but only those who qualified for work-study. Community service workers are also working in Squires at night. However, budget cuts have made it impossible to set time aside to train workers.
"They are starting to look at alternate ways to get people in here," Brooks said. "Any new students that get hired are required to be work-study, whereas before, Squires was one of the only places on campus you didn't have to be."
Spencer said that while many changes have been made, the results are not yet clear. "I'm not sure we have all the feedback on whether it's making a difference," he said.
The consultants' report, required by ACUI's contract with Tech to be filed within 30 days, will offer suggestions aimed at increasing efficiency.
"We're going to be interested in what they have to say in terms of overall observations," Spencer said. "We're really looking to them to give us a sense, as professionals in the field yet outsiders to Virginia Tech, what do they see in the organizational culture, what do they see in the staffing arrangement."
Mindrum said UUSA is a rare student union that provides more than one facility for its campus.
"UUSA is four different facilities, so that is a little bit different from some," Mindrum said. "The fact that UUSA is responsible for Squires and the GLC and the Chapel is good. That's interesting. It probably makes their lives more complicated, having four areas of focus, but I think it serves the campus well."
He also emphasized that UUSA is one of many organizations being affected negatively by budget reductions.
"This is a tight economy," Mindrum said. "I think most every university I'm aware of is experiencing budget issues. This is a state university, and state support of the university is decreasing. I think those things are always going to have an impact on everyone."
The UUSA staff was praised by stakeholders who met with Mindrum.
"But I'll be honest, one of the impressions I got from stakeholders, not just students, is that they think the staff here is trying very hard," Mindrum said. "So, the feedback we got on the staff has been very positive."
Walters-Steele also complimented her employees for showing resilience.
"I would commend the staff of UUSA because you have such a dedicated group of individuals," Walters-Steele said. "Much of the staff is working above and beyond what they would usually have to do."
UUSA hosts student activities, as well as academic classes and departments. Spencer said the consultants' report would help bring the multiple constituencies to the table.
"Probably a common thread is that we all wish there was more money to do what needs to be done," Spencer said. "Somehow we have to bring those perspectives to the table and set priorities for what we have to do."
Brooks said operations were becoming less stressful as more measures have been taken to shore up UUSA's staffing.
"It's on a week-by-week basis even still," Brooks said. "It's starting to stabilize a little, but for the past two months, we didn't know what was going to be happening each week."
Walters-Steele said the organization is trying to offer the campus community a similar product with fewer resources for the time being. However, she said UUSA might formally request extra budgetary resources.
"We're still struggling because it's very important to us to provide customer service," Walters-Steele said. "As we have to reduce staff, you have to look at what you have to do to maintain critical elements of the organization's mission."
Spencer hopes to find a healthy medium for UUSA, between balancing the budget and offering a quality student union.
"In terms of an ultimate vision, I'd say we would like to take a good department and make them even stronger and even better, and we're looking for a way to do that at a time when budgets are tight," Spencer said. "What are the best ways to ensure quality when the financial pressures are so strong?"