In the coming weeks, students interested in bettering the club funding system will be hopping from campus to campus to analyze their peers.

By sending students to eight universities nationwide, the Georgetown University Student Association’s Student Life Report Committee hopes to gather information on various advisory board frameworks before it releases its recommendations for reform of Georgetown’s student funding boards.

“Our idea was to have students actually go to the front lines of these universities,” said Ronak Parikh (MSB ’12), vice chairman of the Student Life Report Committee.

Student representatives plan to meet with students and administrators at the eight schools to discuss different methods of governing student organizations. Shuo Yan Tan (SFS ’12), chairman of the committee, said the group chose schools that they thought offered unique solutions to challenges faced by university advisory boards.

“Through these comparative trips, we hope to gain insights into alternative modes and structures for student programming, governance and autonomy, and thereafter provide recommendations to reform the advisory boards at Georgetown,” Tan said.

A tentative list of schools includes: University of Wisconsin; University of Pennsylvania; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Cornell University; Duke University; Boston College; American University and The George Washington University.

The first report on student life, which was released in 1999, focused on several aspects of campus life, including bureaucracy, funding and space. Some of the report’s recommendations continue to play out in present-day discussions, including the effort to create more student space around campus.

This is the first time that comparative trips will be included in the study.

“We tend to work in a certain mindset,” Parikh said, adding that he hoped the trip would allow committee members to break free from any preconceived notions.

Parikh said the committee has already received applications from several students interested in participating in the trips. While many of the applicants are members of the GUSA executive branch, leaders of campus organizations and other interested students have also applied.

“We don’t want to make it a GUSA project,” Parikh said. “We want to make it a report that caters to all groups on campus.”

The committee hopes to have two to three students take part in each trip. The overall cost, which will vary largely with the price of plane tickets, is estimated to be several thousand dollars. Parikh said that the trips have been funded by GUSA and by donations from alumni.

Students who participate in the trips will be responsible for writing a report that will be submitted to the committee. Trips are expected to take place by mid-October, and the committee will release their report by the end of the fall semester.