University of Wisconsin Chancellor Biddy Martin announced the 15 proposals to receive money that complete the second round of Madison Initiative for Undergraduates funding.
The announcement comes on the heels of another announcement of seven other proposals to receive MIU funds. Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning Aaron Brower said this brings the total amount of money spent on round two proposals up to $8 million, more than twice the $3.8 million spent on round one.
The MIU Oversight committee presented Martin with their top 31 proposals in February. She proceeded from there, Brower said, by asking two questions. First, would these proposals help achieve the main goals of MIU? Second, in what ways could the budgets of these proposals be trimmed to allow the largest amount of worthy proposals to be funded? Departments then coordinated with Martin and the specific people who submitted the proposals to find the best compromise for funding.
Brower said Martin’s main goals for MIU were to open undergraduate access to key courses and to create innovation within those classes. He said the 15 proposals funded fell right in line with those goals.
“These proposals kind of hit the sweet spot of meeting both of those goals,” Brower said.
Out of the 15 proposals announced, 13 give new faculty lines, or positions, to departments. The seven proposals announced earlier dealt with direct student services. Brower said they announced them in this way to allow Martin and others more time to look into the budgets for these proposals, and to make sure they were giving the correct amount of money for each faculty line.
The two student services proposals announced Monday were some of the more expensive proposals, Brower said, so they waited on the announcement to ensure they had the money for them.
The two student services related proposals help students find internship opportunities in the liberal arts and expand the residential learning communities program.
Brower said the residential learning communities proposal was a particular favorite of his, adding housing had expressed hope to develop three more of these communities within the next few years.
Eight of the 13 funded faculty line proposals were written by schools within the college of letters and science. L&S Dean Gary Sandefur said this makes sense, as the college provides around 70 percent of UW’s undergraduate credit hours and more than 50 percent of undergraduate degrees.
“The Madison Initiative is designed to improve the undergraduate experience,” Sandefur said. “The college [of letters and science] is extensively involved in undergraduate education.”
He said by his count, L&S will receive 28 new faculty lines from MIU funding. Almost all of these lines will assist in what he referred to as “bottleneck courses,” or classes many undergraduates have to take but that do not have enough spaces to accommodate them. He added in addition to increasing undergraduate access to necessary courses, the extra faculty will increase UW’s national visibility and standing.
Sandefur said even though some proposals rated highly by L&S were not funded, he was happy with the way round two went.
“I feel like we did well.” he said. “Again, I think we should do well because we’re the college that teaches the majority of the student credit hours… I feel like it makes sense.”
Although all of the funded proposals came from the MIU Oversight Committee’s top 31, a majority of the nine proposals recommended by the Student Oversight Board were not funded. However, former Associated Students of Madison Vice Chair and member of the Oversight Committee Tom Templeton previously said the student board did not have access to as much information as the committee, and added they rated proposals as they came in, disregarding the possibility for trimming and altering.
