The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) is working on a resolution with the Commission on the Undergraduate Experience (CUE) report to enhance the undergraduate experience. Additionally, USG’s Finance Committee recently worked on Mass Funding, which endows campus organizations and clubs with financial support.

CUE’s preliminary report proposes six recommendations which aim to provide a more consolidated experience for Case Western Reserve University undergraduate students. These recommendations suggest a stronger promotion of school spirit, improvement of advising services for students and a revision of the current curriculum.

“The CUE was designed to take a serious look at the entirety of the undergraduate experience here at [CWRU], and to tackle issues and propose recommendations for how to elevate the experience to the next level,” said fourth-year CUE Student Representative Garret Oester. “The CUE has spent the past two years surveying, researching and generating new ideas about how to make this institution better.”

Currently, the CUE report is in its last stages of revision. The final draft of CUE is set to be released in late May or early June.

The report will provide the University’s Faculty Senate, the new provost and departmental administrators with broad frameworks detailing how they can improve the undergraduate experience. The time it takes for the report’s recommendations to be implemented will vary.

Some of the improvements proposed by the CUE report will require multiple years before taking effect, while others may happen over a span of a few months.

“I think the only way to show your love for a place is to make it better,” Oester said. “I wanted to figure out how this institution could be improved, and the CUE has the ability to look at everything and really make some sizeable changes.”

Meanwhile, the USG Finance Committee has been busy with Mass Funding in preparation for the Fall 2018 semester. A total of 168 campus organizations requested funding for their budgets.

“The purpose of Mass Funding is to allocate funding for student activities planned for the following semester,” said third-year USG Treasurer Sydney Davis. “This gives our student organizations the opportunity to understand what USG will be able to subsidize and what we will not significantly in advance of the planned events, so that they have the opportunity to adjust accordingly or seek other funding sources.”

The process includes four rounds of budget reviews. During each round, allocations are reduced to each campus organization asking for money. These reductions are made based of off varying factors decided by the Finance Committee.

“The USG Finance Committee works extremely hard to make sure we can support our student groups to the best of our ability given the funding that we have available,” Davis said. “We take a lot of student feedback into consideration when reviewing our guidelines and when deciding on cuts for Mass Funding.”

She added, “In the past, this feedback has been primarily anecdotal, but this year, under Vice President Maya Rao’s leadership and Representative Hunter Stecko’s initiative, we sent out surveys to all of our student organizations to get feedback on how to improve our funding guidelines to better fit their needs.”

After budget reviews were completed, percentage cuts were implemented across all organizations receiving Mass Funding so the USG Finance Committee could get closer to their projected budget.