Campus Green Builder

Funding Plan

An award from the U.S. Department of Education, Title III, funded the Phase I construction, including the shell of the building and the first floor in time for the fall 2008 semester. Since a new library has long been a priority for the College of Menominee Nation, but due to lack of capital funding, the college could not move forward until recently. Still facing tight budget realities, the new library project will be completed in phases. Additional funding is being sought for completing the upper and lower levels of the building. US title III program, US housing and urban development – Office of Native American Programs, USDA, National Science Foundation, US department of Defense, US department of Labor, US department of Health are a few of the organization that the College of Menominee taps into for its funding needs for capital improvement projects.

To plan the funding and budgeting processes, an internal and external facilities committees were put in place. Both these committees were also responsible for reviewing the feasibility and the need of the new library. These committees also researched available grants that could be tapped into and considered for this building project. Aligning the planning, design and construction practices employed during the project with the mission of the college was also the responsibility of these committees. The internal facilities committee, constituted of faculty and administration members with construction expertise, was assigned the task of interviewing the architects and contracts, reviewing and evaluating their proposals and reporting the results to the board of directors.

Payback analysis and energy efficiency analysis for the College of Menominee Library was performed through the Wisconsin Department of Commerce.

Code compliance analysis was conducted for the library project using COMCheck software provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. In its current state, with only the first phase completed, the building is estimated to meet 29% higher efficiency compared to its counterpart with traditional construction practices.