Student Senate recently passed a new program that will reimburse Elizabethtown College students with off-campus internships and positions for a portion of their gas and travel expenses. This program will be available for students who currently have unpaid positions off-campus. Those positions must fulfill some sort of requirement, such as a Signature Learning Experience (SLE) or a requirement for a particular major or class. Students who are eligible for reimbursement can apply now on the Student Senate website at www.etownsenate.com. The application can be found under the “Student Groups” tab on the left-hand side, where there will be an option to click on the “Travel Fund Request” button under that section.
To receive aid, students must fill out the application and then submit a log documenting his or her travel details for the period of Jan. 16, 2018 to May 4, 2018. Students have until Friday, April 20 to complete the application and to submit their travel log, available under the same tab on the Senate website as a page called “Travel Fund Documentation.”
Once all the applications have been received, Student Senate will allocate part of its budget that would be appropriate given the number of applicants and the miles traveled. Students will receive aid based on the percentage of how many miles he or she has traveled out of the total miles traveled within the application pool.
There is no fixed wage or ratio for the number of miles traveled to money received, but the maximum amount of money a student can be reimbursed will not exceed 50 dollars.
Student Senate has previously tried to implement a travel fund reimbursement program, but this is the first time Senate has been able to push forward with the idea.
“[A reimbursement program] has been in the works for about three years, but we never really knew how to go about it,” senior Student Senate president Sean Fiedler said.
According to junior Student Senate treasurer Josh Baker, he was assigned the project by Fiedler over the summer to figure out what would need to be done to implement a travel fund reimbursement program.
Baker first wanted to get an account of the number of Etown students who currently have unpaid, off-campus internships and positions, and he discovered there are somewhere between 200-300 students who would be eligible for reimbursement. He then searched for ways to fund the program, which would be coming out of the Student Senate’s budget.
After Baker did research, Student Senate was able to bring a preliminary proposal for the reimbursement program to the floor earlier this year. Baker received feedback and suggestions from the rest of the senators for how to improve and go about the program.
Concerns about the program in its initial stages included how Student Senate should advertise the program to its targeted audience and whether the new program would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
With the feedback he received, Baker adjusted the program to accommodate for the concerns raised by the other senators. He also consulted various people on campus to hear their input, such as people in the Office of Financial Aid, Career Services, Dean of Curriculum and Assessment and College Registrar Dr. Brian Newsome and Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Marianne Calenda. The proposal was brought to the floor two more times afterwards and passed its third time on the floor.
Fiedler and Baker are both excited for the travel fund reimbursement program and how it can help the student body. They said that Student Senate will not receive any benefits from introducing the reimbursement program. However, they wanted to implement the program to help students as best they can as representatives of the student body.
“The monetary amount might be small, but we hope it might help give students some peace of mind with their expenses,” Fiedler said.
“I think one of the important things I want to emphasize is that we want to offer this in the future,” Baker said. He also said that students will not be charged anything and that there is no consequence for applying to the program.
Since this is the first time the travel fund reimbursement program has been implemented, there will be a survey at the end of the application process for students to give their feedback. This way, Student Senate can improve the applications to make the process easier in the future.
Students with any questions can email Student Senate at senate@etown.edu. Applications can be found on the Student Senate website for students who would like to apply for partial reimbursement.
