UNF’s board members discussed performance-based funding and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville’s operational audits at the Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting April 1.

UNF President John Delaney updated members on UNF’s ranking in the Board of Governor’s Performance-Based Funding Model. Delaney recapped how there was a mistake in the calculation of the scores that could have potentially cost UNF millions in funding.

According to Dr. Tom Serwatka, vice president Chief of Staff, UNF is tied with Florida State University for eighth place among the 11 universities ranked by the Board of Governors.

Although this mistake was caught by UNF’s Institutional Research and Assessment Department and corrected by the Board of Governors, Delaney and other board members lamented the potential changes to be made to the performance-based funding system. Competing bills in the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Senate would determine whether or not UNF could be denied new funding.

Delaney spoke about reserving as much money as possible because the metric allows for no predictability for funding in the coming year. Several members expressed discontent with the funding model, as in a previous BOT meeting in January.

Additionally, Shari Shuman, vice president of administration and finance, spoke about MOCA’s operational audits. According to Shuman, in the past three years UNF has received three comments from auditors about MOCA’s funding.

When UNF provided MOCA with a loan in 2012, they were told MOCA had to repay it and that there must be a written repayment schedule. UNF intended to create a payment plan in order for MOCA to repay the money. Furthermore, in 2013 UNF gave MOCA funds to cover personnel expenses. The operational audit asked that MOCA repay that money as well.

Shuman explained that while UNF is taking all the steps necessary to make corrections based on the comments, UNF will be respectfully disagreeing with the comments made by the auditors and maintaining that the school’s actions were not wrong.

Board members also elected Joy Korman as the new Chair of the BOT, and Lanny Russell as the new Vice Chair. Both were elected unanimously.

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