The UND Senate Budget Committee held a Budget 101 session in the Memorial Union Lecture Bowl on Oct. 14.

This session was designed to introduce the faculty, staff and students to the new Model for Incentive-based Resource (MIRA) that is going to be implemented at the university. During this session, the terminology and plan was described for the new budget UND is outlining.

Within MIRA, there are the elements of the primary unit and the support unit. The primary unit is activities that generate revenue, such as the College of Business and Public Administration. The support unit is made of those whose purpose is to provide services for the primary units, such as the student affairs office.

Expenses within primary units include direct expenses, which are fringe benefits, salaries, office supplies and the cost of running the unit. Along with those expenses, there are support unit allocations, which are costs that are paid by primary units for their proportional share of services, which will be provided by the support units.

There is also the participation fee, which are fees paid by the primary units to form a Subvention Fund.

The Subvention Fund is a centrally held pool of money that has two main goals: to subsidize some primary units and to  fund strategically important initiatives.

UND’s plan for the fiscal year of 2016 is to operate under the old budget model so there is a transition period to operating under MIRA. By 2017 MIRA will begin in some units, and by 2018 MIRA will be completely implemented.

There will be further meetings with more in-depth information in the future. The times of these meetings will be determined later this semester.

Anthony Watson is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected]