Administrative fee on gifts reduced for second year in a row
A change in the administration fee charged by both the Foundation and the University on private gifts will provide the University with more expendable income.

On July 1, the administrative fee will drop to 3 percent, the second step in a five-year plan to completely eliminate the service fee assessed on new non-endowed gifts for colleges, schools and departments by reducing the fee by 1 percent each fiscal year. At the beginning of the 1997-98 fiscal year, the administrative fee was reduced from 5 percent to 4 percent.

The fee reduction will result in a greater portion of funds in support of individual areas being available in the future.

The administrative fee is charged on new, restricted donations. Gifts for endowments and all scholarships, as well as unrestricted gifts, are not assessed. The only other gift-related fee is a 1 percent annual charge on the market value of endowment funds (assessed quarterly at .25 percent).

Dempsey Hospital earns high praise from accrediting agency
The John Dempsey Hospital at the Health Center recently received the highest level of accreditation from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations: accreditation with commendation.

Only 12 percent of the more than 5,000 hospitals surveyed this year received comparable accreditation.

Results from surveys and site visits to the Farmington and Thames River campuses included scores of 97 percent for hospital care and 99 percent for behavioral health care.

The Joint Commission is the leading health care accrediting body in the country, accrediting nearly 18,000 health care organization s and programs. It surveys hospitals on compliance with nearly 500 rigorous standards.

First Union opens campus branch at UConn Co-op
First Union National Bank celebrated the opening of its branch at the UConn Co-op with a ribbon-cutting last month. Located adjacent to the UConn Co-op, the full service branch is open six days a week. It is staffed largely by students during the school year. The UConn office makes loans, opens brokerage accounts, and sells insurance. Its automatic teller operates around the clock.

Art & Design Library closed temporarily for renovations
Levels 1-4 of the Homer Babbidge Library are currently undergoing extensive recarpeting. Most of the work is not expected to interrupt service or impede access to the collections on those levels for any extended period of time.

The Art & Design Library, however, will be undergoing extensive renovations as well as recarpeting. The project will include reconfiguring the library collections, adding new stacks, study tables, and desks. These projects, which began on June 15, are expected to take up to three weeks to complete.

During this period, the Art & Design Library will be closed to the public.

Users requiring materials from the art and design circulating collection are asked to work with staff at the reference desk on Level 1, who will arrange for the materials to be retrieved after construction hours and made available at the main circulation desk on the plaza the next day.

For access to restricted materials, call the art librarian at (860) 486-1243.

Advance calling for story tips on sabbaticals, emeriti
Did your sabbatical enable you to pursue a new direction in your research or develop new teaching strategies? Was it particularly productive in some other way? The Advance is seeking information for a future article on sabbaticals. A separate article will feature the ongoing scholarly activities of some of the University's emeritus faculty. If you would like to be included in either article, send a brief (one to two-paragraph) description to Elizabeth Omara-Otunnu, editor, at U-144, by fax: (860) 486-2063, or by e-mail (advance@uconn.edu). Please indicate how you can be reached during the summer break. If you sent e-mail to the Advance during the week following Memorial Day weekend, please re-send the information, as our server was down that week.