Report: Rethink UIF money

By Nancy Wick
University Week

The University Initiatives Fund (UIF) Review Committee has recommended that the fund be continued, but with a different source of financial support. The committee, made up of three UW faculty, one graduate student and three outside experts, issued its report recently after several months of intensive data gathering.

Nancy Hooyman

“We really came to agreement rather quickly about our recommendations,” said Social Work Dean Nancy Hooyman, who chaired the committee. “We kept the outside members - who were only on campus for two days - very well informed so we were able to move forward quickly.”

The UIF was created in 1996 as a mechanism for reallocating University resources. Its goal is to fund innovative new programs, chosen to strengthen the UW, and to seize opportunities that would otherwise be lost. Up to now, money for the fund has come from 1 percent assessments on all University operating budgets.

The committee is recommending that the 1 percent assessment be decreased to .6 percent beginning with UIF four, and that successive assessments be lower each biennium until they are phased out in UIF seven. Simultaneously, the committee says, the University should develop a package of permanent funding for innovation from a variety of sources, with a goal of $5 million per biennium.

The committee is also recommending that the funding of unit-specific initiatives be discontinued and that the 40 percent of the UIF currently used for that purpose be returned to the units. The committee’s recommendations are the culmination of a comprehensive review of the UIF sponsored by the Faculty Senate and the President’s Office. During the last several months, the senate conducted a survey and an open forum on the UIF and students did a survey.

Results of the senate survey and forum showed that the campus is deeply divided on the UIF, according to Faculty Senate Chair Mary Coney. “Many people supported the concept of the fund but at the same time were terribly concerned about what the 1 percent assessments were doing to their ability to perform core functions,” she said. “When I met with the review committee, I told them I hoped they would find a solution which would maintain the best of the UIF and at the same time find a way out of the funding problem.”

Hooyman said the committee came to similar conclusions. “What came through loud and clear when we talked to people was that overall there was tremendous support for the concept of the UIF, the interdisciplinary portion,” she said. “Yet even those who had UIF funding were concerned about the ongoing 1 percent reduction over the next biennia. It was just so clear and consistent.”

Richard L. McCormick

In addition to reviewing survey results, the internal members of the committee did some of their own data gathering. Hooyman said the group - which included James West, Slavic languages & literature; Gregory Miller, civil & environmental engineering; and Gorkem Kuterdem, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate - met weekly from January on, holding hearings and talking to a wide variety of people.

They forwarded what they learned to the outside members of the committee - James Faulstich, Higher Education Coordinating Board; Rita Colwell, National Science Foundation; and William Richardson, W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In addition, the full committee interviewed representatives of many different campus constituencies during the two days the external members were on campus.

When it became clear to the committee that other sources of funding were needed for UIF, they asked to speak to David Wu, acting vice president for development & alumni relations, about the potential for endowments through the major campaign the University is planning.

“We talked to him at great length, and although he said there were no guarantees, he did think there were ways the UIF could be framed that would make it appealing to donors, particularly given the success we’ve had with the current UIF projects,” Hooyman said.

The committee recommended discontinuing the unit-specific portion of the UIF because most people they spoke to felt it was “an experiment that failed,” Hooyman said. Originally, the UIF was designed for interdisciplinary projects only, but the unit-specific portion was added in UIF two in response to requests from the units.

“We just didn’t feel it made sense to take money from units, then ask them to apply to get some of it back,” Hooyman said. “It seemed better to just leave that portion of the money with the units to use as they saw fit.”

In addition to its recommendations about the UIF funding, the committee made a number of recommendations regarding the UIF process. Several of these had to do with communication. “We found that there were students working in UIF projects who didn’t know how those projects were funded,” Hooyman said. “I think that perhaps because the UIF was controversial, some projects kept themselves relatively invisible.”

The committee is therefore recommending that all projects proposed have a component of outreach and publicity built into them and that the distribution of information about the UIF be improved.

Mary Coney

The committee also recommends that proposals be screened for their compatibility with long-range planning goals of their units. Hooyman said that the UIF was originally intended to be integrated with unit long-range planning but that it didn’t turn out that way in practice. The committee thinks this integration should be built into the process.

Other recommendations included: