Funding for individual DukeEngage projects for summer 2009 will be based on the cost of living per region rather than the $7,000 blanket sum that was given to students last summer.
The funding change aims to make the budgets for students in different regions more balanced, Annie Kao, DukeEngage's associate director of finance and administration, wrote in an e-mail. She added that it is unrelated to the current economic recession.
"We didn't feel last year's policy, which gave everyone the same amount, was fair to the students who were going to places that were more expensive to fly to or more expensive to live in," she said.
To determine how much funding students will receive, DukeEngage administrators will refer to a number of indices including the daily cost of living as listed on the State Department Web site, information from faculty who are familiar with the areas of interest and DukeEngage's own knowledge of the areas, she said.
Despite the changes in individual project funding from last year, there likely will not be any growth in the number of student proposals accepted this summer, DukeEngage Director Eric Mlyn said. He added that the number of compelling group projects proposed by faculty was so high this year that they decided to increase the number of group projects rather than the number of individual projects.
The number of applications for both group and individual projects is up 9 percent from last year, Mlyn said. The plan is to fund 10 to 15 more students for group projects.
Jin-Soo Huh, a senior who did an individual DukeEngage project in Mali last summer, said the cost of living in the country was lower than he expected and he was left with extra money at the end of his summer.
"I think that their new program is a great idea because it is recognizing that different places have different standards of living," Huh said.
He noted that he hopes the new funding plan will save money that could be used to fund even more projects.
Huh added that it would be nice if DukeEngage provided all participants with a stipend to compensate them for the money they could have earned working a summer job. The University currently covers the "summer earnings" requirement for financial aid students who participate in DukeEngage.
The budget of $7,000 for each individual project last summer seemed extravagant, said junior Julia Chou, a DukeEngage applicant who is still waiting to hear if her individual project will receive funding. But having students submit an estimated budget would be a better alternative to calculating funding on a site-by-site basis, she suggested.
"Instead, DukeEngage should allow students to submit a budget, just as one would for any other grant application," Chou said. "Not only would it allow students to become more practiced with creating budgets, but it would also be more tailored to the individual and project's needs."
DukeEngage cannot increase the number of group and individual project acceptances as much this year as it had hoped, Mlyn said. But he added that he feels privileged the program is growing at all and is confident that it will continue to expand in the future.
"President [Richard] Brodhead and Provost Lange have made [DukeEngage] a strategic priority of Duke University, and so I think long-term DukeEngage is going to be bigger and better," he said.
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