The Associated Students of Madison's Academic Affairs Committee met Tuesday to discuss several initiatives designed to ease student financial burdens at UW-Madison.
The committee proposed a standing committee to address textbook issues in addition to finding a more permanent way of helping students manage the financial aid process.
Jonah Zinn, Academic Affairs chair, said that while the committee already runs a textbook swap each semester, ASM hopes to establish a shared governance committee that would focus specifically on textbook issues.
""What we are looking at is creating a standing committee through a shared governance process that would address textbooks,"" he said.
""There are a lot of things to work on, things like electronic textbooks, open-source textbooks, getting departments to focus on certain textbooks, library reserve programs and the possibility of creating a textbook rental program.""
The idea behind making the textbook committee a standing committee, Zinn said, was to create a permanent mechanism that would continue to work on behalf of students and respond to new challenges in the future.
The textbook committee would contain three student representatives, three faculty members and three academic staff. All members would have voting rights as part of an open committee. The challenge, Zinn said, will be getting all parties—faculty, administration and students—to buy into the program.
""This is something that we are trying to create by the end of the semester, but it needs to pass through the Student Council and the University Committee of the Faculty Senate and the Academic Staff Executive Committee of the Academic Staff Senate,"" Zinn said. ""We want to get as much support from the university as possible.""
The Academic Affairs Committee also discussed ways to make the financial aid process easier and more accessible to students.
In conjunction with the Office of Student Financial Aid, ASM hopes to host an information session and workshop on filling out FAFSA forms and offer one-on-one advising in April. Committee members said they hoped to make financial aid advising more permanent.
""One of our objectives is to get this help process institutionalized and have it not just be something that happens once a semester,"" Zinn said. ""We want to prevent students from falling through the cracks.""
