The decision over the summer to move the management of the Student Union, Student Recreation Center, and Residence Halls from Student Affairs to Auxiliary Services may lead to noticeable improvements, officials said.
“We want to do things like repainting and adding technology upgrades,” said Executive Director of Auxiliary Services Brian Kulpa. “[Student Union technology] has been woefully invested in for many years. A lot of these rooms are nice but haven’t been updated with technology. Students are demanding technology to make this a better experience [so] technology is what we’re really trying to push.”
“We’re trying to raise the standard here,” said Mark Brooks, director of student union and building services. “We’re trying to upgrade some of the meeting rooms with monitors and technology so we can interface from place to place.”
Brooks said they would be studying “peer school student unions to see what they’re doing to stay cutting edge and look at what the students want. We plan to get survey data from Student Government this year.”
“We want to see more student activity here in the Student Union. We’re taking steps now to upgrade the South lounge … the new elevator going in will be a good thing for [students] too, and the second-floor restroom was renovated,” Brooks said. “They’re small steps, baby steps, but babies grow, right?”
Other projects Kulpa hopes his division will tackle in the coming years include several deferred or preventative maintenance items.
“We’re trying to put together a wish list, for example, the building needs a new roof,” Kulpa said. “We’re looking at the [auditorium], looking at replacing the flooring because so many orientations are in there. It’ll take some time, it’ll take some planning because everybody wants to use it.”
The number of students living on campus and purchasing meal plans has decreased over the past several years, leading to a decrease in funds for projects such as those currently being undertaken by auxiliary services.
In the 2024 spring semester, UT reported an enrollment of 13,951 students, with 1,976 living on campus and 2,175 purchasing meal plans.
Conversely, in the 2017 spring semester, UToledo had an enrollment of 19,221 students, with 2,886 living on campus and 3,850 purchasing meal plans.
This steady decline has led to a decrease in funds, so UToledo has been hosting various events on campus to supplement lost revenue.
“So how do you keep funding all these things, bringing the right services to students? We want to get things really focused on students, but with less and less money. That gets harder and harder,” Kulpa said. “So, you try to look at bringing events to campus – concerts or weddings or camps. People to utilize the space when students aren’t using it during the summer.”
“We’ve got people reaching out to us [to host] a lot of camps: band camps, soccer camps, athletic camps, pharmacy camps … getting potentially prospective students here to see the campus,” he said.
This shift towards funding university spending through hosting alternative events on campus is not exclusive to UToledo, with both Bowling Green State University and Vanderbilt University taking a similar course of action on their own campuses, among others
While Kulpa is working to help fund UToledo alternative sources of funding, he was quick to note “nothing changes from our mission and vision; it’s all about student success.”
