A Glossary for Students on Faculty Boards
It is hoped that the following will cover the majority of jargon used during Faculty Board meetings. If something is mentioned which is not on this list, then you should not feel any embarrassment in asking what it means! (kindly provided by Jacob Head, CUSU Education Officer 2006-7)
BoGS — The Board of Graduate Studies.
Chair — A professorship.
CTO — A College Teaching Officer.
Degree Committee — The faculty or departmental committee responsible for graduate
studies.
Grace — A proposal to be submitted to the Regent House.
HEFCE — The Higher Education Funding Council for England — the body which
distributes government funding to universities.
Old Schools — Often used to refer to the centralised University administration.
PVC — A Pro-Vice-Chancellor, essentially a Deputy Vice-Chancellor with a specific
area of responsibility (e.g. Education or Research).
RAE — The Research Assessment Exercise which rates the quality of research in
each department in every UK University on a scale of 1, 2, 3b, 3a, 4, 5 and
5*. The RAE is criticised for being heavily reliant on quantity of research and
the subjective judgement of "subject panels". Therefore the 2008 RAE (for
which the University will submit information by November 2007) will be the
last one before a new system, based on more objective metrics is introduced.
RAM— The Resource Allocation Model which aims to give show how much each
faculty or department costs the University by taking into account factors
such as student numbers, HEFCE grants and university resources used by the
faculty or department.
Regent House— The highest body in the University, composed of all academic
staff.
Registrary— The most senior university administrator.
Reporter— The University's official newspaper.
Russell Group— A pressure group composed of the twenty largest research–based
universities in the UK.
SRIF— Science Research Investment Fund— money given by HEFCE to support
specific capital projects.
UAS— The Unified Administration Service, the secretariat of the University.
UTO— A University Teaching Officer