The Associated Students of Madison introduced a proposal to select student members for the committee dedicated to finding a new UW-Madison chancellor Wednesday.
If the proposal passes, the Shared Governance Committee will review applications submitted by any UW-Madison student and select two to three finalists for each student seat on the search-and-screen committee.
After each finalist presents a statement to the Student Council supporting his or her candidacy, council will select the student representatives by vote.
The committee will consist of two faculty members, two academic staff members, one classified staff member, two students, two administrators and four community members.
Although only two students have served on the committee in the past, ASM Chair Allie Gardner said she still hopes Student Council can push to have a third student included in order to adequately represent all of the 42,000 students campus-wide.
""We're still figuring out how much room we might have to push for three,"" Gardner said. ""I think the only logical thing is to have three students on it.""
Dean of Students Lori Berquam said although she supports student input, too large of a committee could make it difficult to accomplish the task at hand.
""I think that search committees can become a bit wildly crazy depending on how big they are,"" Berquam said. ""I would say that having a search committee that is little enough to get the work done, but is also comprehensive enough to get us a great chancellor is ideal.""
ASM has to nominate student representatives to the committee by Sept. 31.
At Wednesday's meeting, the council also discussed legislation that would eliminate ASM's chief of staff position.
The position was created in the spring of 2010 to assist the ASM chair and vice chair.
Gardner said she and Vice Chair Beth Huang decided they did not need assistance from a chief of staff, but would rather put money toward training ASM representatives and volunteers.
""Instead of giving one person a stipend we're not going to use, we're trying to spread the money out all over for all of ASM to use,"" Gardner said.
ASM will make a final decision regarding the position at next Wednesday's meeting.
