State University of New York

Maritime College: Faculty Student Association, Selected Financial Management Practices

Maritime College trains students to become licensed officers in the American merchant marine. The College’s Faculty Student Association (FSA) is a not-for-profit corporation that provides the College with such services as a bookstore and food services. The activities of the FSA should be overseen by its Board of Directors, the College President and SUNY System Administration. However, we found that FSA activities received little oversight. For example, even though the FSA had 15 contracts totaling more than $24 million, there was no evidence the contracts had been reviewed or approved by the FSA Board of Directors. We also found that only one of the contracts had been competitively bid. We further determined that the time and attendance practices of FSA employees were not adequately controlled, and the need for several FSA expenditures was not documented. We made several recommendations for strengthening the controls over FSA operations, and noted that the problems identified by our audit were being addressed by the College’s new administration.

For a complete copy of Report 2001-S-25 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.
For a copy of the associated follow-up report click here.