As I go this will be notes that come up so there’s some sort of defacto record of what they’ve said.
-One of the members says they never really got feedback on what proposals actually went through — they also said that they skimmed most of it and focused on 2-3 substantive proposals – It’s pretty understandable: This is about 100 or so proposals bound in a book that looks to be around 400-500 pages (might be an underestimate, however).
Members: Jon Alfuth, Adam Sheka, Tom Templeton, Tyler Junger, Krista (?), Sophia (?), Grant Smith, Aaron (?)
Disclaimer – In the initial stages of the meeting, I didn’t know Krista or Sophia’s name. So Krista is brown haired girl and Sophia is Blonde haired girl. Halfway through, their names are recognized. Sorry.
-To to the body well, they’ll be recording minutes, just so it’s on the record. Good.
-Building is locked, so if they want to get in, they need to call. Building opens at 10 on Saturday.
9:15 a.m.
Rep. Koss is absent. Berquam is here as well.
Open Forum.
Berquam – Six proposals on advising, we’d save money if we could find a collective approach.
- Alfuth likes the compartmentalized approach, because of their specificity.
Junger would like to deal with faculty proposals first.
Lots of the proposals from faculty are along the lines of “we lost these positions and want it back,” and it’s rather hard for students to decide on those. So it might not be appropriate to recommend faculty hire proposals would be irresponsible because they haven’t heard the other side.
Sheka thinks that they can still give an opinion on what proposals have a good deal of ideas.
Templeton indicates they should still look at them because it was of value to the larger committee.
Alfuth – can make recommendations, but let Martin know they don’t have all the information, but enough to make an informed decision.
Berquam – recommendations are still useful, chancellor really listened to the student board.
Sheka – Got questions about what lower committee thought, so if they want to give opinions but not recs, that should be fine.
Brown haired girl – should talk about what departments expressed the most need, but we don’t know how much we got in the first round, so is it fair to give out that stuff if they got a lot of funding the first round?
Blond haired girl - because we do have data, do we give preference?
Junger: I would say we shouldn’t, it should be the same blanket rule, but I only vote in case of a tie.
Alfuth – some are like “we’re in dire straits.” and others are simply improving. At the very least, go to the ones that scream they’ll implode without the hires.
Sheka: I think we need to be careful, there are some departments that are really hurting and they can present data, but that shouldn’t be the thing that prevents us from funding proposals that are innovative.
Junger – if there are departments who are in that dire of a need, then administration should know about that and deal with it. The campus as a whole has a responsibility to fund that department through the MIU.
Junger – on faculty hires, we’ll focus on innovations of study, less importance placed on demonstrated need.
Templeton – thinks bottlenecking should be the number one priority, and they shouldn’t limit themselves.
Junger withdraws his motion to guide the faculty discussion.
Blonde girl — can we just talk about it?
Advising proposals:
Junger (who thinks he’s talking way too much) – thinks they should recommend a full scale look at advising.
Blonde – Any way to ask them to resubmit and form cumulative proposals.
Berquam – I don’t even know if some of the people who wrote proposals know other advising proposals were on the table. Recommendation to look at this more holistically would be far more beneficial. Student isn’t just going to this little corner, because they might be double majoring in something else – if we focus on those corners, we don’t get to the root.
Templeton – we have the great opportunity to centralize a very decentralized campus.
Alfuth – Remain somewhat decentralized, because certain departments know exactly what they need. But that’ll be more expensive.
Brown haired girl - specific departments are requesting some details for their majors/areas. CCAS is frustrating in its generality. Perhaps that works for career advising.
Blonde haired girl – career-based needs very specific advising, CCAS not so much.
Alfuth – Are there any programs that monitors these silos, an oversight organization to scale things down or work on efficiency.
Berquam – Predominant concerns from listening sessions was whether there were any opportunities outside their immediate advisors and basic programs. I don’t think it requires a whole lot to understand how someone can get a gender studies certificate. We create these little niches, but the blinders are on so we can’t see any opportunities outside of that advising.
Bl. Gr. – Why doesn’t every department put out guidelines to follow so that switch to other departments is easier.
Sheka – it’s going to be a lot more productive if we actually talk about proposals.
Alfuth – What are the criteria for looking at these proposals – should we create specific criteria?
Junger – we don’t have limits on our budget for the second round.
Templeton – we have $6.2 million left to dole out.
Bl. Girl -
1.
2. Expand target population in basecamp
3. Expand seed funds for social justice need
4. Mental health case management program – 2
5. Proposal to sustain rlc at UW-Madison – 5
6. Enhancing RLCs – 2
7. Expanding Advising in Res Halls and after hours advising
8. Procuring Env. engaged leaders.
9. Summer research program
10. Expansion of biomed undergrad
11. Wisconsin center for e-learning
12.
13. Small research base learning communities
14. Career and community leadership
15. Educational initiative in global public health
16. Excellence in natural resources and env.
17. Undergrad placement in food sustainability
18. Offices of Pre-bio and pre-health advising
19. Proposal to increase TA resources in CALS
20 . School of Business
Proposal to advance residential learning communities at UW-Madison.
Br. Girl – RLC proposal makes sense, seeing as most of the programs are already filled up. I’ve heard of good experiences in those RLC, but I’ve never lived there.
Alfuth – they indicated they didn’t have a stable revenue source, may not be the best use.
Sheka – Several valuable pieces to this proposal. Shouldn’t be just taking it on through the MIU alone.
Bl. Girl – very based on the first year experience which seems unfair because there’s a lot of those, and those people who are asking for that aren’t going to receive those benefits. Keep that in mind.
Br. Girl – do they have differential payments?
Junger – Yes.
Sheka – still heavily subsidized by other housing students.
Aaron – Bradley Learning Community – my fee was waived, but it someone else was paying that.
Junger – well, you win.
Number 6 – RLC funding
Funding for language based RLCs
Br. Girl - some of the funding for number 5 would probably go to number six as well.
Templeton – RLCs have been prioritized by Martin, it’s all a matter of funding. Entrepreneurship RLC has a grant, but that’ll expire next year, for example.
Junger – assign ratings, shall we?
Ratings:
1. Should be funded as is
2. More questions, but good.
3. Good idea, but should be funded a different way.
4. Not sufficient for funding.
Proposal #6 – Rating: 3
Proposal #5 – Rating: suggested at two
Alfuth wonders about this.
Junger says they should redefine 2, because that’s essentially saying you’re going to be bumped to the third round.
Bl. Girl – Call it a 2 for now, but more on so we can prioritize.
Templeton, mark it at as a high priority and come back.
Finale Rating for #5 – 1 (will come back to it later.)
Next item: #7 – Expanding Advising in Res Halls and After hours advising.
Alfuth – like this because it’s the sort of comprehensive style advising that Lori asked for.
Bl. Girl – what are the advertising for this? How will people actually know if it exists?
Junger- we should avoid specifics like that, unless it comes up.
Br. Girl – if you do afterhours advising, does that actually help?
Aaron – seems innovative to me.
#7 Rating: 1.
Next item – Nelson Institute – Make Environmental Studies a Major
Br. Girl – Problem is that to major in it, you have to double major. Does that make any sense?
Alfuth – I thought it was a great idea to make it a double major.
Br. Girl – I personally like the certificate, but that’s just me. (Says they’re going to get rid of the certificate, so…)
Aaron – I wasn’t a big fan.
Br. Girl - There isn’t anything like that here.
Berquam – and our history is so steeped in this.
Bl. Girl – there’s a lot of demand for this as well.
Aaron – my issue is that, while a lot of it is good, some of it seemed a little unneeded. Most value is coming from the associate professors.
Rating – 1 (We’ll come back to it.)
Now they’re just doing it in order.
#2 – Base Camp proposal
Bl. Girl – this is essentially only for in-state students. I don’t see a need for it.
Grant Smith – they really can find the money elsewhere.
Rating: 4
Next item : #4 Mental Health Case Management Program
Bl. Girl – this is something there is a need for if people fall through the cracks. The more resources there are, the better. Some people might place the blame on students for not seeking out these services, but they might need it.
Alfuth and Sheka – why is this not being funded elsewhere?
Sheka – this isn’t actually a direct service to students, this is a go-between with adminsitration, professors and UHS. It’s not a direct service, so it can’t be funded through traditional channels.
Berquam – It could be funded through seg fees, but it’s not a direct service.
Around 100 students would be served through this program, anyway.
Sheka- can risk management and this be linked together?
Risk management proposal was recommended last time, but Martin said it wasn’t a priority.
Berquam said her staff is looking at another budget cut, so they didn’t want to go forward with the ODOS risk management proposal.
Rating: 3
Next item: #9 – Summer Research Opportunities
Total request: $354,035
Bl. Girl – would like to see more details.
Berquam – Wants to know how this connects to the old biocore proposal – there’s a connection, but it’s not.
Sheka – a lot of money to spend on 13 students.
Berquam – if it were worked into something biocore, it would not need this much money to ramp it up.
Sheka – a lot of this is spent on stipends, housing and meals (343,200, to be exact.)
Alfuth – can we send a note saying you should coordinate with biocore?
Junger – did that last time.
Rating: 3
Next Item – #10 – Expansion of biomedical engineering program
Seems to be some disconnect between what they said they needed before and what they want now (said they’d double it, now say its an increase of 66 percent)
Br. Girl - we shouldn’t fund something because the department is small.
Alfuth – the labs can be used for other disciplines, as well, however.
Fund fac. members 2 and 3
Rating: 1
Next. # 11 – Wisconsin Center for E-learning
There seems to be an overlap with other proposals for computers.
Concerns over cost are killing it because most of it is spent on remodeling a space ($1.2 million)
Alfuth – if they can knock down the amount they need and collaborate with other groups, that’d be great.
Sheka – if they’re shifting the way a course is taught, they should already have those resources in place
Br. Girl – probably taught be TAs. We could get a TA to teach a class.
Junger – plus, you’re giving a student a job.
Junger – didn’t want to speak on this, but he is going to push for an L&S learning center, so it’s something to push aside.
Rating – 3
#12 – Consumer Science Proposal (Resubmit)
Noted that they have a huge student to faculty ratio.
People seem to like it.
Rating: 1.
#13 Research based learning communities
Alfuth – I like the concept of research-based learning communities, liked how they said it could be a model for approaching research on campus for undergraduates. Also, it was not one of the more expensive proposals.
Rating: 2.
#14 Career and Community Leadership
Alfuth – wouldn’t be as available to the student body.
Sheka- unnecessary faculty line.
Aaron – advising component is the best, but seeing as we need to reconsider advising…
Rating: 3
#15 – CALS initiative in Global Public Health
Br. Girl – Kind of surprised there’s not already something like this.
Bl. Girl – 50-100 students for $670,000…
Alfuth – Just FYI – if we give this a greenlight, we’re already above 4 million.
Sheka – Don’t worry about the proposals, we’ll go back. We just need to make sure it’s responsible spending.
Alfuth – Just want to keep it in mind.
Rating: 2
#16 – CALS Building Excellence in natural resources and the environment
Br. Girl – I’m biased, but this is needed because they don’t have the faculty to take care of this department.
Aaron – This is one of these “we’re falling apart” proposals.
Sheka – Asked for what they needed and didn’t go beyond that. A lot of other groups are asking for the whole package, whereas this group is actually just asking for the base necessities.
Sheka: Whoops. They’re also asking for scholarships, which I don’t think should be funded.
Berquam – worthy of a note.
Br. Girls – they note here that if Nelson Institute got funding for their internship program, they’d withdraw some of their requests.
Rating: 1 (cut out scholarship)
#17 – Food for thought – Agricultural and food sustainability
Bl. Girl – think’s the claim that there’s no way to learn about sustainability on campus is a bit over the top.
Sheka – Should note that there’s an interdisciplinary element, but the stipends shouldn’t be funded.
Junger – Do we add something saying if we fund it, they pull out the stipends.
Aaron – Well, does that mean the student pay gets cut in half?
Br. Girl - Oh, the companies would probably front the bill.
Junger: I think there are foundations where money can be accessed.
Sheka: I don’t think not cutting the stipends are killing this program.
Rating: 1 (pull out stipends, however.)
# 18 Biology Advising for Pre-health
Sheka: thought there was a duplication of services, here, if only a bit. Pulling the advising all into one center might make the advising center better, but at the same time I that a lot of this could be incorporated into CCAS and wouldn’t be detrimental to the advising people are getting. Especially the pre-bio people, it doesn’t need it’s own track.
Alfuth – there’s another proposal for intro to bio here, so maybe send it back and say consider integrating with existing services?
Rating: 3
#19 – Proposal to increase TA resources in CALS
Alfuth: Anyone in CALS think this is a big need?
Br. Girl: This proposal just sounds like a way to get more funding for grad students. We try to promote the fact that we have small class sizes and work with your professors. It shows this comparison between this and L&S, but I don’t think it was be an increased benefits to our classes. I haven’t taken the hardcore science classes, so I can’t speak for genetics and microbio.
Bl. Girl – they’re asking for quite a lot of TAs and its more like we want to make it prettier, better. It doesn’t seem like there’s a gap that needs to be fixed here.
Alfuth – maybe funding half the TAs?
Rating: 1* (fund half the TAs)
#20 School of Business
Bl. Girl – lot better than their round one, million dollar budget.
Sheka – The program itself is something that would be fine, but I wouldn’t prioritize it as high as the others.
Alfuth – I’d like to see Part B funded, looks like something they’re already doing but they’re just searching for funding.
Rating: 2.
Next round of 20.
Templeton wants to go over all this, so we’re going back to 1 and 3 to give reasons why they’re cutting them.
#1 Total Effects Alcohol proposal
Essentially – just not needed.
#3 Seed Program for Social Justice Course
Sheka – there’s another Social Justice proposal down the line and engineering majors are going out of their way to take this already existing course, but if you’re going to fund one of these proposals, fund this one. Seems in line with the MIU goals.
Alfuth – Funding the pilot program
Rating: 2 – Junger asks that it be looked at further.
#21 – My Course Guide
Bl. Girl – It seems to be trying to fix something by creating something new rather than actually dealing with the original problem.
Alfuth – they seem like they’re trying to integrate this into a program that already exists.
Bl. Girl – why do we have so many different programs when it comes to choosing classes? I know a lot of people are complaining about the student center, so why are we focusing on creating new programs?
Templeton: Other companies could provide services.
Junger: Scheduler developer rather than in-house would be faster. In-house would be more specific, but not really get moving that fast.
Templeton: We had an offer of almost free, though.
Alfuth: Sounds like maybe send this back?
Br. Girl: Where would all of this be?
Junger: MyUW, not student center.
Bl. Girl – People go to schedulizer…
Junger: If they’ve already got it, why pay for it?
Alfuth: Centralization should be provided by UW.
Bl. Girl: Ditto.
Templeton: Yeah, but we also have an advising program where people can figure this out on their own.
Rating: 3
#22 Travel Wisconsin
Br. Girl : They were just going to go around and recruit Madison and other schools…sounds like Wisconsin Ambassadors.
Bl. Girl: Went to all schools, why not go to the ones with higher dropout rates.
Alfuth: Suggest that they seek another source for funding.
Rating: 4
#23 – Common Scholarship Application
Junger: I’ve used this app, and I’ve not seen any money yet (see? He made a funny.)
Br. Girl – is that expensive for what it was? Is it common for everything?
Sheka: They want to include departmental scholarships as well.
Smith: One year effort was attractive.
Alfuth: I like it, personally, increases access to financial aid.
Junger: It’s actually very nice.
Rating: 2
Berquam: But…they seem to be spending a bit too much here.
Templeton: Remember: We can only end up funding about 4-5 proposals in the end. So we’ll have to prioritize.
#24 - Physiology 435
Bl. Girl – lots of people on the waiting list, even more waiting for it.
Alfuth – In comparison to the other proposals, it’s not going to have the reach to the general student body.
Rating: 2
#25 – Accelerated program for teaching secondary schools.
Alfuth: Doubt people would actually sign up for the class.
Br. Girl and Bl. Girl – This seems like they’re saying they want more teachers in America, so they need to increase their program. Seems indirect.
Sheka – Is this really an undergraduate proposal?
Rating: 3
No. 26 – Interdisciplinary Science Learning Collaborative
Bl. Girl – so, you say the problem is how science courses are taught…so let’s add another course? Doesn’t make sense.
Sheka – first one we’ve seen that talks about doing a FIG. We already approved a bunch of FIGs, how is this going to fit in.
Rating: 4
#27 Undergraduate Education and Educational Services Certification
Junger: It mentions Teach for America, and while it might help gain entry a little, it’s not a make or break push.
Bl. Girl: Still not wowed that people aren’t going to graduate if they don’t get it.
Junger: Make sure to focus on something other than Bottlenecked courses.
Templeton: Initial program was intended to help bottlenecking, but we want something to transform the educational experience.
Bl. Girl – I don’t think this is going to transform the whole campus.
Rating: 3
#28 – Education undergraduate digital foundation – Art Department
Bl. Girl – they wanted two new courses, didn’t they?
Br. Girl – I had a moderate like for this, but that might have been because I felt bad for how bad all their other proposals.
Bl. Girl – We have the potential for our art department growing, would really add more culture if we expanded in that sense.
Junger – we have a few art photog programs
Sheka – there are resources on campus where you can get those fundamental skills to learn flash, photoshop, web designing…didn’t see this as a huge need.
Most people agree.
Br. Girl – Some of these programs are really technical programs that you use in higher level classes.
Alfuth – I disagree, they could train them.
Br. Girl – but they can find other places for these programs.
Bl. Girl – proposal later on that talks about similar programs that are easier to use.
Rating: 4
#30 L&S – faculty hires to improve Intro Biology
Aaron: Very important, but very expensive.
Templeton: Startup costs are coming from somewhere, but not MIU and it’s not clear where.
Berquam: As I understood at the beginning, startup would come from MIU.
Sheka: What are the startup costs and a lot of this is professors that are being replaced, but how are the lab materials not still there?
Templeton: This might be incentive funding to attract high-class faculty
Berquam: Feels like it should be a department thing
Sheka: Skews so much of the money into the sciences a lot. Start up costs here are at least a million dollars.
Berquam: Put down that for a question.
Bl. Girl – When faculty leave, why does that funding disappear?
Junger: We lost six faculty along the way and they were never there again?
Berquam: It’s a budget cut – money goes back to campus or system for a cut.
Sheka: Definitely support the proposal.
Bl. Girl – because they’re applicable to a lot of science students, it’s going to help a lot of students.
Junger: Is everyone OK with the cost?
Templeton: Knock out the startup costs?
Startup costs shouldn’t be done through MIU, Rating: 1
#31 – Chemistry proposal (missing a good deal of this discussion because I’m trying to update the blog comments and look at a few Nat related articles.)
Rating: 2 (startup costs shouldn’t be done through ASM)
#32 – Comm Arts Global Media Center
Smith: Felt like this wasn’t really MIU worthy.
Sophia: Can see there’s demand here, but it doesn’t seem like something you need to fund.
Sophia: Will be more taken as a filler.
Alfuth: Would be open to funding at least some of the professors, because if you don’t take a class this semester, you end up staying for five years. Intensely bottlenecked.
Rating: 3
#33 – Comm Arts Film Production and Digital Media
Sophia: Again, I would have liked to see more numbers.
Krista: What did they want?
Sophia: New equipment.
Aaron: Their description of their current equipment does make it sound like they’re really out of date.
Junger: Want to bring UW-Madison to a point where they can be a film school. There are schools in the system where this is done. A lot of the research based things cant be done at other schools, but this can.
Templeton: Disagree, I think this should be something to look at. It may not be transformative, but we shouldn’t brush it off because it is done at another school.
Sophia: Very narrow-minded. We don’t know how many people are really being reached with this. We don’t know how many people are in the film school right now. Need not demonstrated.
Rating: 3
#34 – L&S Computer Sciences Instructional Support
Sophia: Could be broader ranging.
Sheka: I would like to know why L&S ranked this as a low priority. If we look at this from a global perspective, then maybe this is an area where we should be investing resources.
Junger: I think I agree with the idea that this has a broad impact.
Grant: Anyone can use a clas in programming.
Alfuth: They do have a demonstrated desire to reach out to people outside of Comp Sci and have the metrics toback it up.
Rating: 1
#35 – Certificate in East Asian Languages Communication
Rating: 2
#36 Economics: L&S top rated proposal
Aaron: Very important, but very hard to stomach the budget.
Alfuth: Demonstrated a solid need.
Rating: 1
#37 L&S challenges or reading and writing, literature
Sophia: They say their quality has gone down because the classes are too large, why don’t the let in fewer students? Because right now we don’t know how pressed they are with time to graduate. I also don’t think it’s one of the most transformative areas.
Rating: 2
#38 – French and Italian
Aaron – Clear bottleneck
Krista: French versus Econ, it’s pretty hard to compare. I think they deserve something.
Sophia: The Europeans seem to think Americans are uncultured and such…this could help.
Aaron: We can’t do this to appease Europe (Yuk Yuk Yuk)
Rating: 1
#39 History – No budget, so they bump it. Great job, first major.
#40 – International Studies
Alfuth: All the classes and their breadth are through different departments. More interested in the Capstone courses.
Sophia: It helps but it isn’t vital, you can probably get resources elsewhere on campus.
Rating: 3
#41 -Journalism
Sophia: I like the use of large fonts, made it really easy to read.
Krista: Increasing their major by 30 percent – that’s a decent amount…
Aaron: But I think that’s 150 kids. Also can’t seem to take some money, only all of it.
Junger: Will help J-school students and then the campus rather than in reverse
(I throw in my own points…300 people apply, a third are accepted.)
Sophia: There’s a need to keep the school going for journalism majors…but what are these additional classes.
(Explain the fact that there’s only 201 for non-j schoolers.
Alfuth: We’re concerned whether they’re asking for too much.
Templeton: I’d say to limit the amount of splitting hairs because it’ll get messy and take away from the actual ideal of the MIU.
Aaron: Doesn’t hit a priority.
Rating: 2.
#42 – Duplicate.
#43 – Philosophy.
Junger: This seems to be “To be a better philosophy department, we need this”
Templeton: Should be noted that they ranked this proposal as a higher priority than French and Italian, and we gave a thumbs up to that.
Sophia: French and Italian is a higher priority.
Rating: 3
#44 Political Science
Junger: Not positive that it’s something they need.
Alfuth: Poli Sci isn’t really hemmorraging…
Junger: Well, the problem is that Harvard is stealing our professors.
Alfuth: Maybe we should say we like the idea of the capstone, but maybe make it a big smaller?
Sophia: No numbers on here for what they wanted.
Grant Smith: It depends on what they’re getting for salary.
Sophia: That’s not an excuse.
Aaron: And that’s a lot of money for a department that’s supposedly fine.
No budget: Bumped.
#45 – Psychology
Sophia: Who put this in an unreadable font? Looks like a wanted posted.
Alfuth: It’s a good idea if you knock off the startup costs.
Sophia: This is a major that isn’t of wide ranging appeal to campus because most non-majors don’t take psych courses. Didn’t really like this.
Alfuth: They have something to bump up Psych 201 for general students.
Sophia: But it’s mostly for higher level courses, so it’s not…it wouldn’t help that many other students.
Sheka: I don’t know why were getting so hung up on this. Why can’t we just make a major good? I’m fine with prioritizing, but I don’t understand saying that this has to benefit the entire campus.
Rating: 3.
#46 School of Social Work
Sophia: I’m kind of confused by the budget, to an extent.
Alfuth: If people from different majors can take the intro course, that would be something I’d definitely like to see funded.
Discussion comes up about L&S ranking, Junger asks people to not worry about how Sandefur ranked them.
Sophia: We don’t know how many people this is affecting or how it will affect people in the future.
Rating: 2
#47 – Spanish and Portuguese
Grant Smith: Every Spanish class is full every semester.
Sophia: Second most spoken language in the world.
Rating: 1
#48 Statistics – No Budget
Sophia: They’re actually having people from other departments teach statistics.
Sheka: The no-budget ones are easy to see what the need is, and it’s between $80-120,000
Junger: All no budget proposals will be 4.
#49 Emerging Scholars
Alfuth: Seems like this is way outside of the scope of the MIU
Junger: Is there overlap with PEOPLE? Doesn’t seem like that.
Rating: 4
#50 – Computer Sciences Best Practices
Krista and Sophia seem to like it.
Alfuth: Didn’t include a budget for their faculty.
Sophia: Seem to provide enough funding information.
Krista: Seems to be practical.
Sophia: Math 240, Bio 375 are other courses this would work with.
Aaron: What did we give the other Comp Sci proposal?
Sophia: a 1
Rating: 1
#51 – First Wave Scholarships
Junger: I staunchly oppose scholarships in MIU proposals, so I’d say no.
Rating: 4.
#52 – Internships in the liberal arts
Templeton: We’ve already funded some internship programs.
Aaron: Didn’t really like this proposal. Their claim that students realize their internship opportunities. I don’t buy that lower-class students don’t understand the concept seems ridiculous as a claim.
Sophia: Made it seem like there were barely any opportunities, but that seems really unrealistic.
Rating: 3.
#53 – Major specific advising and student services
Sophia: This is where stuff is between centralized and decentralized.
Junger: If we had my way, I’d actually deny all these proposals and fund a commission on how to fix advising at UW-Madison.
Sophia: That’s why I like the proposal at the beginning, the notes system, because it looked at it holistically. But right now, we’re in a real limbo land kind of.
Junger: Unless people want to talk specifically about this, I’m going to voting.
Alfuth: I agree, we’re putting five types of carpet down and using 10 different materials for each part. So it might be worthwhile to reject these proposals, unless they spread across all areas equally. Instead, we should recommend a more comprehensive approach from administration to advising. You can take bits and pieces and say we like these and send them back.
Sophia: We should rate them on a singular basis, so that when we send it back, they know what proposal to look at the most.
Rating: 4 (we’ll come back with notes)
#54 Student Transition from Academic to Career Success
Berquam: Seems like advising, right?
Smith: Isn’t this career advising?
Sophia: We already have services on campus, which are good but could use some extension of services.
Alfuth: It is built on the current structure, so it looks like they’re extending this.
Sophia: How many students are being helped at the L&S career center now?
Junger: Didn’t seem to like it much.
Sophia: Saw a need for it, but…
Apparently, says it’ll serve 12,000? Meaning they get an e-mail.
#55 – African American Studies
Sophia: Didn’t like this one too much.
Krista: Definitely no on the trip funding.
Sophia: This isn’t high school, no time for field trips.
(someone: Yeah, we’re not subsidizing this.)
Sophia: Seems like they don’t really have great justification other than it’d be cool.
Rating: 4.
#56 – Ethnographic initiative
Alfuth: Not ranked as highly by L&S – weren’t a whole lot that were ranked as highly. Do we want to really talk about all of this?
Krista: We should still give them all a fair chance.
Junger: Doesn’t seem like there’s a benefit to students, more beneficial to the state.
Sophia: Wasn’t really UW-Madison focused.
Rating: 4
#57 – Education on Climate Change
Grant Smith: Don’t they teach this high school?
Junger: They also teach American History in high school. I like this: low cost, bottleneck, could be a great idea.
Rating: 2
#58 Art History
Alfuth: Lost my interest when they stated from the beginning that they have a vibrant undergraduate curriculum.
Sophia: I’m predominantly anti-art history- seems to be the go-to major for lots of American undecideds. (speaking from German perspective, where you have to decide a major in high school.)
Aaron: Scope is very small – 150 students.
Alfuth: One of the best in the country, already.
Junger: When we’re taking something good and making it better, doesn’t seem to need it.
Alfuth: Not as a great of a comparative need or priority.
Sophia: Could get private funding donors.
Rating: 4
#59 – Asian American – Hmong studies
Junger: Wisconsin has a high Hmong population
Aaron: I though there was very little information on the size and scope of this program. Wasn’t quite sold on why the current staffing structure didn’t suffice.
Sophia: Demonstrate the need, but…
Junger: The department likes to have a lot of visiting faculty.
Rating: 1.
#60 – Expanding research and UW Arboretum
Alfuth: Seems like it’s going to be primarily graduate research with a few undergrads thrown in there.
Krista: Seems like most of it is included in Nelson Institute activity.
Junger: That’s my problem is that most of it seems to be graduate based.
Rating: 4.
#61 – Chazen
Sophia: With the new building, I’m not sure if we should be getting them more money. But I like it.
Junger: Liked in the proposal the different areas they have for English and other courses.
Sophia: Thought it was a good idea, but then I was confused about why they had to have art handlers along with the curators.
Junger: You draw a parallel: the Chancellor is in charge of UW, but she travels a lot so you need someone else to do that work.
Sophia: Didn’t see the need for an undergraduate program. Don’t know why I crossed that out.
Junger: What was it for?
(missed some of the conversation, Berquam was talking to me about a photographer…I think from the Cardinal?)
They seem to say to revise and resubmit.
Rating: 3.
#62 – Chican@/o studies
Alfuth: Collaborated with a couple of different departments, not exactly a small majors, might have a student mandate to increase size. Could be transformative, but isn’t probably a priority in my mind.
Junger: Is that consensus?
Aaron: I agree, I think it’s a really good idea, but repeating what was just said, in the grand scheme, it’s not at the top of the list.
Krista: Might have a way to get different funding.
Rating: 2
#63 Center for Classical Studies
Sophia: Already a highly efficient teaching unit…so.
Krista: Why is this needed?
Junger: They’re asking for an institutional structure, fostering interdisciplinary teaching
Templeton:creating more courses in a FIG
Krista: Seems like a smaller scope than the last one.
Sophia: One of the smallest departments in the country in comparison, and they say it’s pretty efficient, so maybe it’s not that highly demanded?
Junger: And they have no metrics to say otherwise?
Sophia: Nope. And I want to see how big it is in comparison to the other deptartments in the university.
Rating: 3
#64 – Comp. Lit
Junger: Don’t think we should be paying for what they’re asking for through MIU funds – there are trusts for that.
Berquam: Seems to indicate that the visiting professors are a double edged sword – faculty thinks its energizing, but students think they don’t have enough of a relationship (long-lasting) with it.
Sophia: Nothing really jumps out in this proposal, but nothing seems awful. So, I’m floating between a 2 or 3.
Alfuth: Not an outstanding priority.
Rating: 3
#65 – Digital Studies
Junger: This looks like it’s basically creating a new department. Most of the courses don’t seem to exist yet. I don’t know how departments go about creating themselves at our university.
Templeton: This is exactly what we’re looking for, innovation.
The Journalism classes were in an earlier proposal.
Alfuth: A lot of overlap here.
Berquam: New departments usually break off of old departments. It’s always usually come out of crisis. Because we have disability services because of people coming here, we have LGBT services because people are asking for it. Either that or because it was a new field.
Junger: Maybe we can create a new department, but this isn’t one we should create. Especially for over 2 million dollars. What I wish we would have asked for is to have them divide it into three: Minimal funding, moderate funding, maximum funding.
Berquam: We’re doing that next time.
Alfuth: There are actually two scenarios.
Sophia: Seems to be more tied together rather than spread around all over campus.
Junger: To do this right, we’d have to spend the full 2.5 million dollars.
Rating: 4.
#66 – Cool Japan Center
Alfuth: Sounds really cool, but not really what we should be funding.
Aaron: Pretty hugh gap in information as far as faculty funding goes.
Junger: This would be something that’d be great to funds, but we don’t have the funds for.
Alfuth: I’m sure I would find it interesting, but…
Rating: 4
#67 Cool Japan 2
Rating: 4
#68 Certificate for Written Communication
Junger: Why didn’t we do this 100 years ago?
Sophia: Very vital, we forget how vital writing is, especially with texting and everything.
Junger: Really enhances marketability for students
Rating: 1
#69 English 324 – No budget
#70 Folklore
Sophia: Aren’t there already a lot of folklore classes already.
Smith: They should just crosslist more people.
Junger: Well, they’re not asking for professors, it’s mostly staff and lecturers.
Templeton: Should keep priorities at teaching.
Aaron: Lecturer at 22,000 was a good idea.
Sophia: Kind of got lost in this proposal at one point. Didn’t really understand what they wanted.
Rating: 3.
#71 – Geography A
Rating: 3
#72 – Geography B
Junger: Low cost, what impact and where?
Rating: 3
#73 – German – No budget
Sophia: This department does teach thigns the wrong way – no cultural component.
Aaron: Does the German department have the huge unmet need that the Spanish department needs
#74 – German and Women’s Studies
Junger: I’ll admit it, I didn’t really read this one. Although, it does seem like we don’t have the faculty to take care of some of these issues now.
Alfuth: It’s probably not something that should be one of our top priorities.
Junger: Other unmet needs.
Rating: 3 (included a CV…they already had someone in mind to hire.)
#76 – Hebrew and Semetic Studies
Junger: Seems like a stopgap measure
Smith: Not a pressing need in my opinion.
Junger: This wasn’t one of the things that needed to be transformative.
Rating: 4
#76: Hip-hop studies
Junger: Costs about $380,000
Alfuth: If I heard that this got funded over something integral like psychology, I’d be pretty upset. I think a bunch of other people would be upset.
Templeton: Is it that you don’t see the value in this?
Aaron: I’m not afraid to say, I just don’t want to see my money going to this other than a more important department.
Alfuth: I have to think there’s some money somewhere in other decisions.
Junger seems to support giving this some funding, but the rest of the board seems to oppose.
Rating: 3
77# – History B (once again, no budget. They think it’s a great idea…BUT THERE’S NO BUDGET. GODDAMN IT HISTORY DEPARTMENT.)
#78 – History of Science
Junger: Looking at doing more FIGs, focusing on undergraduate research, high impact, low cost.
Rating: 2.
—-
Alright, I have to go move my car. I’ll let you know how they rated the rest of these things tomorrow.
