The 10 student members of the University Facility Fee Advisory Board agreed to fund several projects to improve classroom facilities around campus Thursday evening during their annual vote to allocate funds.

Out of 23 proposals posed to the UFFAB during the past few weeks, 10 projects were funded in full. No partial funding was awarded.

The UFFAB used about $1.16 million of their $1.2 million budget to fund improvements in fiscal year 2016. Each college has one student representative on the board, and members vote to fund projects based on a set of criteria, the first being the degree to which a project directly benefits CSU students.

Several general assignment classrooms were funded for complete renovations: Microbiology A108, Engineering 100 and Wagar 231 will be updated to include new furniture, flooring, ceiling, lighting, sound panels, audio/visual, podium, HVAC, power and data and wireless Internet. 

Room 145 of the Gifford Building will receive a remodel of the classroom and kitchenette, including removal of hazardous equipment, new kitchen flooring, new carpet, cabinets, countertops, safer electrical circuitry and more. 

According to Jen Krafchick, director of Campus Connections, the room is in “atrocious” condition for their program, which uses the room’s kitchenette to provide meals for 130 youths and 150 mentors.

“It’s not enough to provide functionality for the extensive demands of our program,” Krafchick said.

Other remodels funded included $34,990 for Weber 223J, 223H and 223, which are several classrooms used by the Statistics department. Rooms 223J and 223H will be combined into one classroom, and both future rooms will each receive a SmartBoard.

Rooms 336 and 338 of the Geosciences department of the Natural Resources building will also receive an overhaul, as will Shepardson 102, Education 11 and Education 13. The latter three will become “flipped” classrooms, which are designed with movable desks that convert from traditional lecture-style layout to tables for work in small groups.

A proposal from the Design and Merchandise Department for classroom C102 in Aylesworth Hall was also funded, which will serve to install circuitry for a proposed virtual reality system called the VisCube™ M4 CAVE (Automatic Virtual Environment). The proposal says the VR system is intended to enhance “campus-wide collaborative teaching, learning and engagement activities benefiting CSU graduate and undergraduate students.”

The Aylesworth proposal was a somewhat contentious topic for the Student Fee Review Board, who met Monday to discuss the UFFAB funding allocations. According to the SFRB, Aylesworth Hall has only three to five years left of functionality and will likely soon be demolished, making it unfit for such a project. 

Additionally, the UFFAB funded a windrow composting operation for the Foothills Campus to greatly expand CSU’s ability to compost, which will begin to operate early in 2017. 

The stated mission of the UFFAB is to advise to the Vice President of University Operations concerning the roughly $743,000 collected per year via the $21-per-credit-hour University facility fee, in order to ensure that all allocations of the University Facility Fee will be used in ways that directly benefit the students of Colorado State University.

Collegian Reporter Julia Rentsch can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @julia_rentsch.