At the meeting of the University's highest governing body last weekend, the Corporation endorsed the suggestion to increase the budget of the Office of the Dean of the College by $550,000.
According to the University Resources Committee report, the increase should make "permanent a $200,000 allocation provided for pilot programs" for 2008, with an additional $350,000 which will "permit the Dean to begin implementing changes to Brown's advising system, to support a possible science resource center, to enhance support for undergraduate research and for curriculum development."
Professor of Political Science Terrence Hopmann, a URC member, said the committee left the actual allocation of the increased funds to the dean of the College.
"We divided things as best we could, but to a large degree we left it to the discretion of each of the departments - in this case, the dean of the College - to decide what to do with it and how to allocate it," he said.
The budget increase will mainly fund initiatives suggested in the Task Force on Undergraduate Education's report, such as improvement of advising resources, faculty support and the curriculum, Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron said.
"Once I start dividing it up, I think there's only a little bit for all," Bergeron said. "But it will help."
If a group of faculty advising fellows is created to support professors, the money would help fund them, Bergeron said. "There have been suggestions about developing new initiatives in certain lower division courses in math and science," she said. "I would just like to be able to move forward on some of those proposals."
Knowing how much of the new budget can actually be allocated to each area will be helpful, she said, though allocations for specific areas have not yet been determined. Some specific areas of the additional money will include looking into writing requirements and international education and advising programs, such as the Meiklejohn program.
Additionally, she said she would like to see an incremental increase in the number of Undergraduate Teaching and Research Assistantships. "It would be great if we could increase the number of UTRAs by 30 or 40 percent next year," she said.
The dean of the College's office actually came to the URC with a proposed increase of $1 million, Bergeron said. "Of course, you always ask for a lot more than what you get."
Hopmann said the URC had to give most departments less than they would have liked. "We would have liked to give more to the College and to lots of things, but we always face a resource constraint situation - there is always so much to allocate, and only so much in the budget," he said. "Financial aid became a major priority that took up a lot of resources."
Bergeron said the dean's office will have no trouble using the increased budget. "In the end, a few hundred thousand dollars isn't a lot of money. We can use that very quickly," she said. "I mean, it's great. I'm not scoffing. But we won't have any trouble finding use for it."
