Aimee Sachs
Less than one month into the new state fiscal year Florida A&M University is setting its sights on the future.
The FAMU board of trustees on Tuesday agreed to ask lawmakers to increase funding in the state Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget by $33.5 million.
That’s just under half of the nearly $70 million appropriated to the historically Black college by the Legislature for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
“We count that as quite a success,” said FAMU’s Director of Government Relations Danielle McBeth. “And $5 million in recurring operational enhancement, which we hadn’t seen over the last couple of years, so we want to build upon the success from last fiscal year.”
About $28 million of this year’s $109.9 billion state budget Gov. Ron DeSantis signed will go to campus infrastructure projects. The FAMU-FSU College of Engineering will receive $6.62 million.
McBeth didn’t initially mention the dollar amounts for next year’s requests in her presentation, but the figures were disclosed when pressed by FAMU Board of Trustees Chair Kelvin Lawson.
FAMU will request $15 million for “elevating and sustaining student success.” That includes increasing graduation and first-time licensure pass rates for nursing, farming and physical therapy.
The university will also seek $12 million in performance-based funding. That includes student success initiatives, financial support for students, transfer services and academic program support.
FAMU will make a $6 million University of Distinction request. Universities of Distinction was formed to aid Florida’s nine “non-preeminent institutions.”
The proposed figures reflect what FAMU has asked for in the past.
“We are maintaining the request from prior years,” McBeth said. “We made some progress but did not complete it, and so in terms of our operational enhancements we are continuing to make that request so that we can hopefully see the great strides we’ve been able to make by having the continued state investment.”
