University of Wisconsin officials announced the first recipients of funds from the second round of proposals for the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates Wednesday.

Through round two of the proposal review process, seven proposals of the recommended 31 are guaranteed funds, said Aaron Brower, vice provost for teaching and learning.

Emphasizing help for disabled students and advising, these proposals include increased outreach to international students, a common scholarship application, a case management program at University Health Services, increased outreach to transfer students, after-hours advising in residence halls, online scheduling programs for deaf students, a pre-doctoral internship to examine the best practices for serving students with disabilities and $1.5 million to overhaul the entire advising program.

Brower said Chancellor Biddy Martin asked to reexamine the other 22 proposals before she decides whether to grant funding.

“The chancellor has asked for an opportunity to review those one more time to make sure that the proposals that we do fund are completely and totally consistent with the MIU,” Provost Paul DeLuca Jr. said.

Martin’s review will delay the second-round decisions, but DeLuca said he expects Martin to make her decisions soon after returning from China April 5.

Despite Martin’s delay, Brower said her decisions would still be considered in the second round, because the distinction between rounds is determined by when the proposals are submitted.

Brower said the third round would mirror the second round as far as deadlines and announcements, meaning proposals will be due in November with decisions announced in March 2011.

DeLuca said the target amount of funds for the second round is $8 million, but he said this figure is not definite. This figure is twice the amount distributed in the first round, where $3.8 million was allocated.

“In round one we purposely tried to limit the distributions … so we could go through the process, get the faculty used to writing these proposals and see how well we did on alignment of the proposals with the MIU,” DeLuca said.

Having seen many proposals thus far, Brower said he continues to be impressed.

“I honestly am just so proud of my colleagues having really picked up the challenge of … providing more education for more students and also doing it in innovative ways,” he said.

The McBurney Center received funds for two proposals in the second round — one to update its online request scheduling system and the other to fund a pre-doctoral intern, Cathy Trueba, director of the McBurney Center said.

A paper-based scheduling system is currently in place for deaf or hard-of-hearing students to request services such as interpreters for events occurring around campus that Trueba said can take days to fulfill.

“Something that comes up… it wasn’t planned. It’s not in our schedule; they can make that request, and we have a much greater likelihood of being able to fill it on short notice than we do with our current system,” Trueba said.

The internship is aimed at pre-doctoral psychology students and would last one year. Trueba said the internship would bring a higher level of expertise to the McBurney Center than they currently see with pre-master’s interns.