About the CLCE
Community Letter
Community Letter from the Policy Committee on Lectures and Cultural Affairs
Welcome to the 2013/14 Academic year. If you wish to plan a lecture or event, you should begin with the automatic individual $500 classroom lecture allowance and the $1500 program budget given to your Department or Academic Program by CLCE. These funds are administered respectively by your Administrative Assistant and your Department or Degree Program chair. Please begin your event planning by inquiring about these funding sources.
1. CLCE particularly solicits applications this Fall for two of our competitions: Major Events and Wellesley Wednesdays.
A. Major Events Competition. This academic year we have inaugurated a new competition for faculty and staff that authorizes total grants of $5000 or more for individual events, more than three times our normal lecture fee guideline. No special application form is required, but please be sure to note on your application that your proposal is in fact a Major Grant Application and to provide detailed information for all aspects of the proposed program and its budget.
B. Wellesley Wednesdays. We are grateful for the Wellesley Wednesdays proposals that have sustained this Presidential program. If you are inviting a speaker or performance that has campus-wide appeal, please consider scheduling it in the Wednesday noon community time slot on a remaining date. We will prioritize all Wellesley Wednesdays applications.
2. Over the past years we have coordinated scheduling and the flow of information between the Student Organization Funding Council and CLCE. Through an amendment to the Articles of Government we have also placed a non-voting SOFC representative on CLCE. These new arrangements end decades of funding impasse between CLCE and Student Government and powerfully facilitate the processing of student applications through these two funding sources.
By contrast, however, CLCE routinely returns faculty and staff applications due to inadequate information, leading to delays and possible loss of funding. We strongly recommend that you observe the following guidelines:
A. Only use the current application form. It is posted on the CLCE website (www.wellesley.edu/clce). Some of you are submitting outdated forms and therefore provide insufficient information for a decision to be made. We continually make changes to the form based on developing budget and evaluative policies, so make sure to use the current online form.
B. Consult with a member of CLCE about your application. Any member of the Committee can respond to a proposal idea or draft application and can report on our current review procedures and policies. Such consultations have proven most helpful to applicants and the success of their applications.
C. Provide detailed program and budget information. The most common reason applications are returned or rejected is because they do not supply the requested information in sufficient detail. Two areas have the most frequent shortfall:
1. Program information. Applicants must not assume that CLCE has familiarity with your lecturer or cultural performer. Although there are faculty representatives from Groups A. B, and C on the Committee, we are joined by a large group of administrative and student representatives. Such a collaborative body will not necessarily know anything about your proposed program, and it is your responsibility to explain to us in substantive detail what your speaker or performer will do, for what part of the Wellesley community, and why your event is academically or culturally significant.
2. Budget information. Faculty and staff applicants often provide much less detailed budget information than student organizations do. CLCE has funds that are limited in amount and earmarked for various uses that we apply to support individual applications. We examine budgets very carefully and observe in-house guidelines such as a $1500 maximum fee for academic speakers (apart from the Major Events Competition) and $50 per person for faculty dinners. Food, fees, and travel receive special scrutiny, and we try to keep these amounts as equitable as possible. We ask that you provide itemized budget statements based on documented estimates wherever possible.
D. A note for faculty. Many of us submit applications for research funding to the Committee on Faculty Awards. Those applications require detailed statements of purpose, project narratives, and budget. We take significant time and effort to complete those requirements. Yet the amounts that faculty request for lectures and cultural events often exceed the College maximums for in-house research grants. It would seem, then, that the care we give to applications to CLCE for academic and cultural events should be commensurate with those we make for our research projects. Such an upgrading of faculty applications will make them much easier for the Committee to process and much more likely to receive full funding.
Thank you very much for your attention. We look forward to receiving your new proposals.
Margaret Carroll, Chair
for the Policy Committee on Lectures and Cultural Affairs
September 2013
CLCE Members:
Faculty Chair: Margaret Carroll 12-15 (A)
Administrative Director CLCE: Corinne Frazer
Administration:
Student Services Representative: Megan Jordan
Cultural Advising Network Representative: Karen Shih
President's Designee : TBD
Faculty:
Charles Bu 13-14 (C)
Louise Darling 13-16 (C)
William Joseph 13-14 (B)
James Petterson 11-15 (A)
Student Representatives:
Jasmyne Keimig '16
Brittany Saunders '14
Maggie West '14
SOFC Representative - Yuki Zhu '14
