The Madison Initiative for Undergraduates Oversight Committee met Wednesday to continue discussing which MIU funding proposals it will recommend to Chancellor Biddy Martin later this month.
The MIU Student Oversight Board ranked each proposal earlier this semester, and the MIU Oversight Committee, which consists of faculty, staff and three nonvoting students, is now in the process of reviewing all 114 proposals while taking into consideration the student board's rankings.
According to Aaron Brower, vice provost for teaching and learning and a member of the committee, roughly half of the $10 million generated this year by the MIU tuition increase was set aside for need-based financial aid, leaving about $5 million to allocate across campus.
Brower said the group ranks each proposal using the criteria Martin outlined for the MIU. These criteria involve ensuring easier access to high-demand courses while also trying to accomplish more expansive goals within specific departments, he said.
He said the majority of the proposals asked for more faculty and staff to open up certain classes to more students.
Brower said, however, that the proposals that really stood out this round were those asking for funds to improve departments' overall curricula and included things like internship opportunities or undergraduate research programs.
According to Maria Cancian, a UW-Madison professor in the school of social work and also a member of the committee, members also tried to give the highest rankings to the proposals that impacted the most students and were cost effective.
Both Cancian and Brower said choosing which proposals to recommend is a difficult process.
""It's a glass half-full and a glass half-empty,"" Brower said. ""The half-full part is people really stepped up across campus and proposed all sorts of really great projects, the half-empty part is there are way more good projects in need out there than we're going to be able to fund.""
Cancian said to try to accommodate more of the requests, the committee is able to make amendments and choose to fund parts of certain proposals.
""We routinely recommended amendments … usually not because all the aspects of a proposal weren't worthy but because honestly there were many more proposals that we really wanted to fund,"" she said.
Both the MIU Student Oversight Board and the Oversight Committee will present their recommendations to Martin later this month. Martin will take both groups' recommendations into consideration and will likely make her final decision in early March.
