By Kelsey Braun ’22, Editor in Chief
During the Fall 2021 semester, St. John Fisher College rolled out iFisher – a program that provided every student on campus with an iPad, an Apple Pencil and a keyboard case. Students who take classes at Fisher for at least three semesters are able to keep their iPad upon graduation.
Originally this meant that students graduating in December 2021 and May 2022 would need to pay a fee to cover the cost of the iPad if they wanted to keep it upon graduation. However, thanks to funds from the American Rescue Plan, graduating seniors can now apply the grant to the cost of the iPad if they want to keep it.
“This is something that changed in the middle of the Fall semester,” said Katie Sabourin, the Director of the DePeters Family Center for Innovation and Teaching Excellence. “We were anticipating and when we rolled out the iPads it was explained to seniors that if they wanted to keep their iPad there would be a cost at graduation, or they could hand it back in at no additional fee.”
The American Rescue Plan is a stimulus from the government with federal emergency funds that the college can use to help with technology expenses. “There should be no senior at this point who is leaving the college this year who has to pay for their iPad if they want to keep it,” said Sabourin.
In order for students to receive the funds from the grant, the Office of Student Financial Services sent a survey to students who are set to graduate in May 2022 and who have received an iPad bundle.
An email with information about how to apply the federal funds to the iPad has been sent out only to seniors who have applied to graduate. “If they get the email and are not graduating or have another class to take they just need to answer no,” said Marie Fico, Director of Student Financial Services.
“What they need to do is make sure that they fill out the form that they give the college their permission to use these federal funds to account for that cost,” said Sabourin. Within the form, seniors should select that they are graduating, have received an iPad bundle, that would like to keep the bundle and finally approve the funds be applied to the students account.
The American Rescue Plan has already been applied to iPad costs for seniors that graduated in December 2021. “We had to do this in the fall semester,” said Fico. “If someone missed the form or did not complete it, we started calling and reaching out to individual students to make sure that they knew that this is a process to actually keep the iPad bundle.”
With the May form already available, the Office of Student Financial Services urges students that are interested in keeping their iPad to fill it out sooner rather than later so OIT can clear their device and it is theirs to keep.
Students with any questions regarding the form or the process of applying the funds to their account should contact Marie Fico, [email protected], or Katie Sabourin, [email protected].
