"The most recent chunk of money totals about $64 million," said Mark Polatajko, senior vice president, finance and administration. "Half of that is institutional direct the other half is student direct. These are for eligible expenses all through way through September of the year 2023."
The third round of funding from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, or HEERF, will specifically aid many underfunded institutions. The U.S. Department of Education will distribute $10 billion to community colleges, $2.6 billion to historically Black colleges and universities, $190 million to tribal colleges and $6 billion to other minority-serving institutions.
The funding is split into two categories: student aid and institutional aid. At least half of a school's awarded funds must provide direct relief to students as emergency financial aid. The U.S. Department of Education gives schools a significant amount of flexibility in its guidelines for spending their institutional dollars.
Polatajko said he appreciates the wide window of time the university has to spend the money.
"You think about us growing out of the pandemic — it's not going to be abruptly over a weekend," Polatajko said. "It's going to take time. That's why we really appreciate not only the funding provision, but also the length of time that we can thoughtfully and methodically apply that to the most strategic and highest uses."
One of those uses to this point has been student grants that could be spent in a variety of ways. About $19.3 million has been earmarked for the program, which Mary Parker, vice president of enrollment management, said has been helping students cope with personal setbacks associated with the economic downturn and the pandemic.
Some students lost jobs and weren't able to keep up with rent, electricity and other basic costs of living due to pandemic, Parker said.
"Not only did they need money to pay tuition, but, more importantly, they needed money to live; they needed money to pay rent; they needed money for food, electricity, transportation, even," she said.
In addition, Parker said the university made a point of letting students know about resources on campus, including food pantries, mental health services and more, as they applied for grant funding.
"We really took the approach that it wasn't just about how are we going to give them this money but how are we going to help support them through this entire pandemic," Parker said. "What I'm really proud of what is Kent State's holistic approach to meeting the needs of our students but also our faculty and our staff."
Another serious need for both individual students and the university was technology, which became increasingly important as courses went online.
"What we recognized after the first several months is that our students didn't have technology, " she said. "Some of the technology they needed to support them through the virtual process. And so we were able to spend some of our money — almost $800,000 — on technology where students could apply for technology grants and we could help to support them."
For example, she said some students shared a single household computer with siblings who also were using it for remote learning.
"Some had no internet and they were going to sit in parking lots to access internet," said Parker. "The technology piece was pretty comprehensive in terms of the the things that our students needed."
Of the $19.3 million in student emergency grants, she said $775,000 was spent on technology to help students access remote learning.
Polatajko said about $10 million was spent on technology at the institutional level, as well, which was an investment in the future, as well as a way to make education as seamless as possible online during the pandemic.
"We've plowed in nearly $10 million in a three month period to completely revamp the university's network and IT infrastructure," he said. "And that obviously serves our faculty and our students well in terms of having a very strong performance in terms of online, remote learning, but also really helped out as our university employees and staff were telecommuting and working remotely. Those are wise investments that will serve us for the next 10 to 15 years."
Other institutional costs associated with the pandemic included an investment in healthcare on campus, including doubling the number of health care employees, Polatajko said.
"We also renovated nearly 2,000 square feet of our DeWeese Health Center for examination rooms and added a 1,000-square-foot modular unit to support examinations, testing, contact tracing and then vaccinations," he said.
In total, the university has used $7.8 million on healthcare supplies, services and testing, according to a chart listing the uses of pandemic relief funds.
Parker said all student services that exist at KSU were taken online during the pandemic, which was large undertaking for the IT team at the university.
"Every thing that we did, we did online," she said. Some of the services moved online include recruiting, a one-stop shop for students with questions about their fees, financial aid and other fiscal matters, and more. "We have an amazing IT team that really supported our staff and bringing up our students support services, so that we never missed, we did not shut down at any point."
The IT team also managed to convert 9,000 courses to an online format before classes went online, said Polatajko.
"in a three day period, we converted 9,000 in person courses to remote instruction. That's really a testament to our outstanding faculty, our IT support and you know this can do attitude that we had," he said.
Ohio State University: $115,371,387
University of Cincinnati: $69,995,422
Kent State University: $63,870,126
Ohio University: $52,817,422
Cuyahoga Community College: $41,645,625
Reporter Bob Gaetjens can be reached at 330-541-9440, bgaetjens@recordpub.com or @bobgaetjens_rc.
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