This October marks the kickoff for restating the previous university budget model to a model that has been in development for the past two years.

Although the restatement will eventually have undeniable effects on the university, the transition will pass by unnoticed to the untrained eye.

“For students, this should be a seamless transition,” said Todd Holcomb, a leadership and transition team member and associate vice president for student affairs.

The new model, called the Resource Management Model, is a fresh way to allocate resources within the university. The new model has the main objective of distributing university money to the different colleges and various auxiliary units, which are categorized as resource responsibility centers.

Under the RMM, all undergraduate students’ tuition is compiled into a pool from which financial aid is detracted first. Of the remaining net tuition, one fourth of it is distributed to the college the student is enrolled in and the other 75 percent is allocated to the colleges from which the student receives individual classroom credits. For graduate students, the RMM distributes the entire tuition to the student’s college of enrollment. Of the resource responsibility centers, expenses for administrative support programs, the library, facility, information technology, business and student services are distributed based on consumption or student head count. Funds for the president, executive vice president and provost come from state appropriation.

According to the description of the RMM on the ISU budget Web site, one of the underlying principles of the RMM is greater transparency in terms of revenue distribution.

“The model’s intent is to make the budget for the university more visible to everyone,” said Dan Woodin, a leadership and transition team member and information systems leader with IT Systems. “So the college deans will now have more control over the budget, revenue and expenses going into their schools.”

Within the principles of the RMM there appears to be a greater sense of connection between a college’s responsibility to their resources. This heightened responsibility also comes with greater freedom to develop their programs as they see fit.

“[With the RMM] there is a lot of autonomy to colleges to determine emphases of programs,” Holcomb said.

The colleges or programs are now more directly in charge of decisions relating to their area of the school. Principles of the RMM outline a broader opportunity to strengthen interdisciplinary aspects of a college while staying true to the goals of the university.

“So [the RMM] really has, in a nutshell, the potential for a better alignment of revenues, performance and responsibilities, and with those come costs,” said Joe Colletti, senior associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Colletti also served on the budget model review and implementation committee.

The RMM differs from the traditional budget model, which was based on incremental budgeting. This means colleges received a certain amount of funding each year that wasn’t necessarily attributed to the amount of resources the college needed to operate or expand the way it desired.

In the RMM, the president will still have the final word in resource decisions, Woodin said.

“He has to have that to do new initiatives so that the university is going in directions it needs,” he said.

The model first came into consideration in 2005 when ISU President Gregory Geoffroy requested that a study group find a new budget appropriation strategy in order to “be more responsive to the changing mix of state appropriations, tuition and other revenues that [have] evolved in the recent years.”

The results of the study led to the design and implementation plans of what is now the RMM. While the transition into the new budget model began just this month, implementation will be a work in progress during the fiscal years through 2010, when it is expected to be complete.

The timeliness is attributed to the desire for “decision-makers to become more experienced with the model’s parameters and develop effective management practices for their operations within the new structure,” according to the budget Web site.

In a letter addressed to the faculty and staff of Iowa State in January, Geoffroy acknowledged the incredible amount of work it took and will take to create the RMM. The effort has taken the participation of several key committee team members, deans of colleges, administrators and university employees.

“I believe it will successful,” Wooden said. “I’m very impressed with the progress that the provost has put in place to make this happen.”

According to the Resource Management Model’s Web site, the RMM succeeds the current method of budgeting on four different levels.

More accurately links responsibilities with resource decisions.

Provides decision makers with more transparent and relevant information.

Provides a more effective way to accomplish the goals of the university’s strategic plan.

Rewards units that focus on high-quality education, research and outreach programs.

– Information compiled from ISU budget Web site