Editor’s note: Daily Titan executives Sara Leon and Michelle King wrote and edited this article, with assistance from copy editor Gizelle Medina. Executive editors Jayden Lovelady and Sergio Gonzalez wrote and edited the corresponding editorial, and did not contribute to the production of this article.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many student programs at Cal State Fullerton will see a reduction in funding in the 2026-2027 academic year, as those being supported by Instructionally Related Activities funds will receive 40% to 60% less than requested.<\/p>\n
IRA funds are intended to pay for student activities, including athletics, art exhibits, publications and organizations must reapply yearly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fund was established in the CSU in 1978 to \u201cprovide support for essential educational experiences and activities that aid and supplement the fundamental educational mission of the University.\u201d<\/p>\n
This spring semester, $47.41 of each student’s fees were allocated to IRA funding. It will increase to $49.12 for the upcoming fall semester.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a budget memo sent to President Ronald Rochon and three of his cabinet members on Feb. 2 of this year, IRA Committee Chair Mahak Ahmad reported that the IRA budget was projected to be $2,427,309.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of the projected budget, it was reported that the IRA committee would award $2,485,556 to 113 programs, with approximately $58,000 of the award coming from minor balances recovered at the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the memo, an estimated $7.8 million was requested from a total of 140 proposals \u2014 a record number compared to previous years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The committee consists of voting members \u2014 the chair, eight student representatives and eight faculty representatives \u2014 and non-voting members \u2014 representatives from the university president, student affairs, administration and finance, academic affairs, the provost and the IRA administration team.<\/p>\n
Each year, proposals are evaluated using an IRA evaluation rubric to determine the amount of funding they will receive.<\/p>\n
The assessment process is split into five criteria: enrolled student impact, broader impact, program description, overall program integration and budget. The IRA committee then rates each proposal and generates an overall score.<\/p>\n
The quartiles each proposal is put into are determined based on how high it scored on the rubric, with a score of 3.0 being the highest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cConsistent with IRA Governance, proposals were scored using the approved rubric, ranked into quartiles, and adjusted according to funding limits for new and existing programs,\u201d the memo reads. \u201cProposals in Quartiles 1-3 with final scores of 2.0 or higher are recommended for funding; proposals in Quartile 4 and those scoring below 2.0 are not recommended.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Proposals that were placed in Quartile 1 will receive 60% of the funding they asked for, with Quartile 2 receiving 50%, Quartile 3 receiving 40% and Quartile 4 receiving 0%, according to the IRA Governance and Funding Deliberation process.<\/p>\n
According to the memo, some of the programs that will not be receiving an award include the Spain summer 2026 study abroad, the 2026 BFA acting capstone project, the kinesiology course Teaching Lifetime Physical Activities and Titan Capital Management.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While most of the proposals were accepted, many colleges and departments across CSUF will be affected by the drastic cut in awarded funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The College of the Arts will receive the largest percentage of IRA funding, with 30.3% of the total going to the college and is followed by humanities and social sciences programs at 18.8%. The College of Education makes up the smallest percentage with just 1.6% of the total budget being allocated to them.<\/p>\n
Randall Goldberg, IRA Representative for the College of the Arts, explained how his college uses IRA awards to fund student workers, travel for performances, guest artists, clinicians and more.<\/p>\n
He explains that funding cuts will affect how many student worker hours the college may permit and the likelihood of performance travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the ensembles do run outreach concerts in the community, so that\u2019ll be limited. Purchasing music will be limited, hiring guest artists \u2014 just the whole operation will have to be reduced but these are classes so the coursework has to continue,\u201d Goldberg said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gayle Brisbane, communications professor at CSUF and adviser for OC News, said that cuts could affect student employment at the news station, as the funds are used to support student workers, closed captioning software and rundown software.<\/p>\n
To make up for lost funds, departments could be required to seek outside resources.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what other options are out there because it was always just applying for IRA money,” Brisbane said in the interview. “So there could be other grants that we could be applying for, but that’s something that will need to be discussed and possibly researched.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor’s note: Daily Titan executives Sara Leon and Michelle King wrote and edited this article, with assistance from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,73337,3005,4110,112792,57740],"class_list":{"0":"post-254346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-budget-cut","12":"tag-csuf","13":"tag-funding","14":"tag-instruction-related-activities","15":"tag-ira"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}