A committee of the University of Wisconsin’s student government approved the budget for Student Learning Programs and heard a budget proposal for Adventure Learning Programs at its meeting Thursday.
The Associated Students of Madison Student Services Finance Committee did not debate SLP’s proposed $55,953 budget for fiscal year 2014-’15 and passed it 8-0-1.
ALPs, a student organization that offers adventure-based experiential education ropes courses and workshops to UW students, also presented its request for $149,441.99 for fiscal year 2014-’15.
ALPs’s proposed budget is down from their budget of $152,700.17 from 2013-’14, ALPs representative Lee Swartz said. ALPs returned 11.74 percent of its funding from the previous fiscal year, he said.
Swartz said ALPs returned money in multiple lines, including salaries, supplies and services, program budgets and fringes.
Swartz added moving from two specialized staff trainings to one next year is one of the reasons for the decreased budget.
SSFC representative Brett Ducharme asked ALPs members whether having one person in attendance at the symposiums and conferences the organization included in its budget was necessary for the quality of ALPs.
By going to the conference, the experiential education specialist is able to learn new activities, policies and risk management, Swartz said.
“There’s nothing like us on campus, so we’re…looking towards other groups which are similar to us around the country and what are their risk management policies, what do they do,” Swartz said, adding that the experiential education specialist helps keep ALPs up to date.
SSFC Chair David Vines commented on ALPs’ efforts to go paperless last fiscal year and asked whether the organization still required money for print and photocopying.
Swartz said the paperless effort had been great in theory, but was very hard to implement and ALPs would be returning to paper forms.
Representative Devon Maier expressed interest in the honorary speaker fees allocated in ALPs budget and how these speakers helped students.
Christine Fukuda, ALPs representative, said the specialized training gives ALPs the opportunity to bring in someone else to share their ideas rather than just having more experienced facilitators teach similar to the other staff trainings.
“[It is] an opportunity to bring in different speakers on different topics…on [topics] that we can’t necessarily teach ourselves,” Fukuda said.
SSFC members also inquired about the differences in quality between ALPs high and low ropes courses and the differences in cost.
The low ropes course is generally for shorter workshops and team building, Swartz said. He added the short ropes course is technically on campus, so ALPs does not have to pay any rental costs on it.
SSFC will decide whether to approve the ALPs budget at its next meeting Oct. 27.
