I’ve received an email from UW Pres. Seidel! Here is what he had to say:

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Dear Hunter,
 
Thanks very much for sharing this petition and concerns with me. We are dedicated to providing the best educational experiences to our Cowgirls and Cowboys in good times and tough times, and your passionate representation of this issue for your fellow students is much appreciated.
 
Financial accountability and transparency at all times, but especially during these unprecedented times, are important, indeed.  I directed my administration to review the situation. As a result we have decided to revert the fees for those courses that were previously scheduled to be delivered face to face (but were then switched to online delivery in response to the pandemic) back to the campus-based fee schedule. The program and advising fees on these now-online courses will go directly to support student success services, materials for students, and professional academic advising, as they normally do for campus courses, and those services will continue to be available to you regardless of location. This decision will only apply to courses that switched modality from face to face from online, not to courses that originally were scheduled for online delivery.  
 
An informational document was also developed earlier this summer by the Office of Academic Affairs that contains an explanation about program and distance delivery fees and what they are used to support in normal times. This document was shared with ASUW leadership and is now posted on the Office of the Registrar’s website (see: http://www.uwyo.edu/registrar/delivery-change/program-distance-delivery-fees.html 
 
Our faculty are gearing up for the fall, with more than 225 instructors to date participating in summer courses offered by the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning (ECTL) in digital teaching and learning.  Many more faculty are participating in other types of trainings and serving as mentors for their colleagues.  Our faculty are tapping and sharing best practices and lessons learned they came away with after the Spring semester with their department colleagues and in national conversations, and are using that experience to adapt and pivot to stronger online pedagogical methods.  They are excited to welcome the Fall semester – and you – back to the classroom, wherever that classroom may be.    
 
In response to the petition request for a more transparent and accountable way to view and understand the UW fee structure, I am asking my team to work with ASUW to come up with a tool that allows students to easily understand the fee structure for all degree programs, investigate a better itemized bill structure, and create a dashboard by fee to directly show the benefits of each fee.
 
Thank you again for reaching out to me.
 
Best wishes,
 
President Ed Seidel