One of the major topics of discussion in today’s faculty meeting was our college budget and the university’s new budget model. Lots of important initials when you consider university finances.

SCH – Student Credit Hours
The credits tied to classes students take. The college gets one amount of money for students in our college and a much lower amount if the students are taking classes in our college who are majors in other colleges.

RCM – This is the new financial structure for UF. So new that the initals aren’t always defined the same way — Responsibility Centered Management? Resource Centered Management? This budgeting approach puts more responsibility on each college to develop a business plan. We will receive funds from the university but then will have to allocate them not only to salaries but to paying a charge for classrooms and our library, paying our electricity bills, paying a “tax” on the funds we raise for the college’s foundation account.

ACEJMC – That’s the communications accrediting organization that reviews university programs and determines if they will be accredited programs. Currently, 113 programs (schools, departments and colleges) are accredited by ACEJMC. The UF College of Journalism and Communications is one of those programs.

FAR – Faculty Assignment Report.
This is the form each of us is supposed to receive prior to the start of each semester indicating the allocation of our efforts based on 100 percent of our time. Duties include teaching, research, service, administrative duties, etc.

FYI — Those initials are important for individual faculty members, as we try to remember our FARs as we make decisions about how we spend our work time and think about how many SCHs we are generating for the college that can help us in the RCM budget model. But we need to remember that ACEJMC sets guidelines for class size caps to try and promote more effective learning.