The first Blazer Bytes was held by Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Chuck Mann on Tuesday, Feb. 23 and focused on the college budget and budget building process.
President Chapdelaine announced that Blazer Bytes will be a new series of information sessions set up as “a series of informational talks on various aspects of the College to facilitate campus-wide understanding, communication and collaboration.”
The kick-off session was well attended by faculty and staff, who were told at the beginning of the session that this counted as professional development and that they would be receiving certificates of participation for donating their time to learn about the budget. However, though Gretchen Nonemaker invited all student activity organization presidents and treasurers to the event, there were only a handful of students in attendance.
From the start, it seemed that President Chapdelaine was committed to making Blazer Bytes a success with her warm welcome, feedback surveys being given out that asked what topics attendees would want covered and by providing audience members with their own note taking pages that even had a copy of the presentation powerpoint on them.
Chapdelaine thanked everyone for their attendance and explained that she wants Blazer Bytes to be about learning how processes work and starting a conversation. She said that they decided to begin with this topic because the budget is an issue that more people wish they could understand.
Chuck Mann began his presentation by polling the audience to discover what they would like to learn and made sure to tackle any points brought up by anyone in attendance during his presentation. Mann explained that this was a summary of the budgeting process and that he would share what exactly a budget is, what our budget looks like and how it gets built.
Mann went on to share that budgeting is a cycle that goes through three steps: assessment, planning and budgeting and that it flows in a continuous loop.
Mann said, “We never have all of the resources we want…we have limitations…how will you allocate those scarce resources? Not everything can be a priority.”
The Planning, Budgeting and Assessment Committee comes up with a plan and then flags the priorities setting up a structure to begin with the strategic goals, move on to three year goals, move to one year goals and then finally create a draft. The PBAC tries to focus on 3-5 years at a time.
The PBAC comes up with a plan that is presented to the president, then moves to the Board of Trustees and the new budget kicks in on July 1. President Chapdelaine said,
“This is our final year of this strategic plan and hopefully the Middle States will give us enough to go off of to start the next plan.”
The session was very informative and broke down both the budgeting system and explained who was on the PBAC, but it was very much focused towards the staff and was very formal.
President Chapdelaine shared that there would be an upcoming Blazer Bytes in March with the topic and date to be announced and a third one on April 12 about student enrollment. She explained that the sessions would each differ and could cover concepts like fundraising and curriculum, but they were certainly open to suggestions and would love to hear feedback on the entire concept as well.
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