A couple months ago, Home Pages asked its readers to submit their favorite IU-related acronyms. We were, we said, cooking up a pot of "acronym soup." It's a soup, admittedly, that won't get you over your first cold of the season, but it's a hearty list. See the next two pages for a compilation.
In almost every case, there is a Web site that will take you to more information and broaden your knowledge of the university where you work.
Three submissions we particularly thought were worthy of comment. Marcia Zuzolo, assistant director of information services at RUGS (Research and University Graduate School), sent in the following acronyms which are interrelated and of particular interest to the research community: SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network); SMARTS (SPIN Matching and Researcher Transmittal System); GENIUS (Global Expertise Network for Industry, Universities, and Scholars).
Access these sites at:
Another submission we enjoyed was from Vickie Welsh-Huston, coordinator of academic advising and student activities at IUPUI. A few years back, she tells us, a group was formed at the Indianapolis campus representing a number of student service functions: the bursar, admissions, the registrar and financial aid. They named themselves, accordingly, BARF.
And from Michael Shermis, associate editor of RUGS' Research and Creative Activity magazine, we get PCMCIA (People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms).
Which brings up one last point. Several dictionary definitions refer to an acronym as a "word" which some people take to imply pronounceability. For this particular exercise, we've let the alphabet go a bit, allowing, in some cases, for a string of characters formed from the initial letters to be considered an acronym.
As flu season arrives, we think there is an argument for the language of sneezes and sniffles: ACUI (Association of College Unions International) and ACAC (Administrative Computing Advisory Committee).
Keep in mind this is not a comprehensive list of acronyms.
For some bonafide computer language acronyms:
http://www.access.digex.net/~ikind/babel.html