BE Board:Proposal

New Event Fund Proposal
Dear Doug,

The board has been discussing the way the BE board budget is organized. When putting together our budget, the board tries to make a realistic estimate of what the events we expect to hold will cost. This ensures that we wisely spend all the money we very gratefully receive from the department every year. The one disadvantage of this system is that we don't have a lot of flexibility to support new, worthwhile events that students may want to organize. Some examples include the academic mentoring seminars initiated last year and the recent BE.180 course development workshop. In the past, we would try to crunch budgets and squeeze out funding for these events. However, with the increasing number of proposed events, especially in response to career development concerns that came up during the graduate program review, our previous methods may not be sufficient.

Therefore we propose, for your consideration, the addition of a "new events fund" as part of the board's budget. The idea would be that any event that is a demonstrably new and worthwhile event for the board (as determined through a written proposal to the board) could be supported from this fund and if successful could become a regular part of the calendar in future years. Any money remaining in this fund at the end of the year would, of course, return to the department. Hopefully, set up this way, the fund would be a positive way for the board to encourage new events and not just an increase in the board's usual funding. For this current year, there is an extra $1000 in the student board account that was not part of our original proposal which we would like to use for this fund, with your permission.

As ever, the board is extremely grateful for all the active and financial support we receive from the department. If we can provide any more information about this proposal or if you would like to discuss it further, please do not hesitate to contact Diana or I.

Yours sincerely,

Barry and Diana, On behalf of the BE board