The Student Retention Center, a campus service organization that funds projects to help students graduate, reduced its deficit to $75,000 this year and expects to reach a surplus next year.
Theresa Stewart, chairwoman of the governing committee for the center, said it faced a $125,000 deficit two years ago because of mandated pay raises and because of the growth of the center.
She added that the deficit was not created because the center was spending its funds negligently.
The center had cut the deficit by $50,000 last year, and will continue cuts until it reaches a surplus, said Tim Ngubeni, the director of community programs for the center.
Stewart said budget cuts made in the past two years include reductions in transportation costs and a no-growth policy on its projects. The policy prevents projects from requesting more money to expand services, such as peer counseling.
She added that the center was also more conservative in allocating its funds than in previous years.
But Stewart said she does not expect the cuts to affect the quality of the center’s services.
“(Cuts haven’t) affected the impact of our services. … (We’re still) maintaining our projects,” she said, citing as an example the center’s Academic Support Program, which helps black students graduate from the UCLA College.
Stewart said SRC receives all of its funding through student fees, mostly provided through referenda such as 2005’s Promoting Understanding and Learning Through Service (PULSE). Referenda are used to fund service organizations similar to SRC.
But Stewart said the funding from the referendum is used to maintain the center’s projects and is not enough to help projects expand. SRC receives less than a quarter of the total money collected through PULSE.
“In hindsight, we should’ve asked for more money. PULSE did its job, but now we’re growing,” Stewart said, adding that at the time, SRC did not ask for more money because it was only trying to cover its current projects, and was not expecting the projects to grow.
Still, Stewart said the deficit will be decreased through cuts in spending, and added that the committee has decided not to ask the university for money.
“(The center) prides itself in not getting funding through the university,” Stewart said, adding that the center does want the university to include the group in more issues dealing with student retention.
But the university did ask for the center’s nomination for a new Academic Advancement Program director during its search to fill that position, said Judith Smith, vice provost for undergraduate education. She added that she worked with the committee often, but it could be difficult to maintain communication with SRC.
The main cut that helped the center last year was the decrease in the money allocated for SRC’s summer training, Stewart said.
“We cut training back and streamlined the process to make training more simple,” Stewart said. She added that the shortened training ““ from one month to three weeks ““ saved the program $30,000 and will be implemented again this summer.
Additional cuts included assigning each of the center’s five projects one student counsel and one full-time director. Previously, each project had its own staff, and Stewart said this change saved another $15,000.