Brandeis is developing a new financial system for clubs that the university hopes will be installed by the end of the year. University admissions has used the software, called Slate, for seven years. Now, the university is in the process of creating a separate portal within Slate that improves upon the design of the current club financing system, called the Student Union Management System (SUMS).
“It’s a significantly cleaner, better, nicer system. It will walk you through everything,” said Rebecca Shaar ’21, Chairperson of the Student Union Allocations Board.
Shaar was involved in the development of Slate, which began in the spring semester of 2019. As a member of the Allocations Board (A-Board), which distributed $2.1 million of funding to student clubs in the 2018-2019 school year, Shaar uses SUMS to make decisions about approving money for clubs. In SUMS, club treasurers create lists of items that their organizations need, along with the amount of money requested to pay for those items and submit additional Google forms to the A-Board for approval.
“It’s a tough system for clubs to learn how to use,” said Shaar.
With Slate, the Google forms will be integrated into the program, and the experience will be more user-friendly in general, said Stephanie Grimes, the Assistant Dean of Students, in an email to The Brandeis Hoot. Shaar said that Slate will use language that’s easier for club treasurers to understand and will account for some of the human error that causes problems in SUMS. According to Grimes, Slate will also connect to COUPA—a system for faculty and staff payment and invoices—and Workday, the university financial system.
“A lot of times it’s up to clubs to figure out, ‘Who do I need to contact to make this happen?’ Slate is going to tell you,” said Shaar.
At the beginning of each semester, student clubs request funding from the A-Board during a period called “marathon.” Some clubs, termed “secured” clubs, get funding for the full year. On the other hand, “chartered” clubs get funding for each semester, participating in two marathon periods each year. The $2.1 million in funding that the A-Board distributed last year is called the student activities fee, a sum collected through a 1 percent tax on tuition, according to the Student Union website. By streamlining the features of SUMS and the supplemental Google forms, Slate makes the marathon process easier for treasurers and the Allocations Board.
“We’ve taken all the functioning of A-Board and turned it into the Slate system,” said Shaar.
Grimes said that the university has used SUMS for 10 to 15 years. The program was developed exclusively for Brandeis and cannot be purchased on the market. Currently, the university has a contract with an individual who supports changes in SUMS programming. Shaar said the software is disliked by some students because it can be slow and difficult to understand.
“SUMS is widely hated amongst club treasurers. It’s a very primitive system. It’s awful,” said Shaar.
Slate, on the other hand, is commercially available and used by over a thousand schools, according to the company’s website. Slate, a customer relationship management program, is already used at Brandeis for processes like admissions and new faculty orientation, according to Grimes. She also said that Slate is funded through the university’s Information Technology Services (ITS).
“Slate is licensed by the university and funded through ITS. We are contributing a piece of the expenditure. Much like the support of the SUMS system, the fees are paid from the student activities fee,” wrote Grimes to The Hoot.
Shaar said Slate is an improvement over SUMS because it better aligns with the A-Board’s process.
“The system needs to fit like a glove to the way A-Board functions,” said Shaar.
Club treasurers may recognize Slate’s name because the university planned to release the program at the beginning of this semester. In early August 2019, Grimes sent an email to club treasurers saying that Slate was “predicted to be ready for the start of the academic year.”
In early September, however, Grimes sent a follow-up email saying that Slate’s release would be delayed until later in the year. Responding to The Hoot in an email, Grimes wrote that the “discovery process has been more detailed than was originally expected,” and to meet the needs of the A-Board, the Budget Analyst and the university, the development team decided to postpone the release. Speaking about the delay, Shaar said that the system is making process in development.
“What they have fully programmed right now looks great,” Shaar said, “But there are small nuances to be fixed, and certain aspects aren’t fully programmed yet.”
In terms of an install date, Shaar said that Slate will be ready “almost definitively by next fiscal year.” Optimistically, she hopes it will be running by this semester’s upcoming marathon, in November. Grimes said she hopes Slate will be in use by the end of the year.
Shaar is hopeful that Slate will make life easier for students when it is finally installed.
“Overall, it’s a lot more helpful in guiding clubs to the resources they need,” she said.
