Dear Main Campus and University Services Colleagues,
Thank you for all that you do each day to ensure a vibrant learning, living and research community. We are writing to inform you of new efforts aimed at improving our financial and business practices to best serve our students, faculty and staff. The goal of these efforts is to make financial transactions involving procurement, accounting and various ad-hoc financial tasks more predictable and efficient; and allow for more focus on financial planning and stewardship activities.
To achieve this, some finance professional staff members working within the Main Campus (in the Provost’s office or at the School or Unit level) and in University Services (those units reporting directly to the Office of the President or the Office of the Chief Operating Officer) will soon begin working in a collaborative shared service model. Transactional functions, such as procurement and accounting, that may have previously been reporting within Main Campus or University Service units, will now report up to the Chief Financial Officer; however, the employees executing on these operations will remain embedded within the units that they serve.
Within the Main Campus, we believe this shared service model will allow finance officers and their supporting teams to focus on strategic issues of academic planning and fund stewardship. In addition, all University Services departments will soon be grouped into “clusters” for financial support services. Each cluster will have a dedicated finance officer and supporting team responsible for providing strategic advice and budgetary support for the University Services departments within the cluster. These clusters will also include dedicated resources to handle procurement and accounting needs, which may have previously been handled at the department level or from one central support group.
While some reporting lines will change as a part of this restructuring process, many finance professionals in the new shared service model will continue to be embedded at Schools and units through a customer service model. At the same time, we will be creating new finance positions with clear career growth trajectories and aligned functional areas of expertise.
All impacted employees working within University Services will receive updated position descriptions. All impacted employees working within Main Campus will have the opportunity to apply for one of the newly created or vacant positions that will be available internally only and will be given expedited and priority review. If these Main Campus employees choose not to apply to these positions or are not selected for one, they will have an opportunity to retain employment at their current salary through a one-year term position. Our team has communicated with the financial professionals who will be impacted by this restructuring and detailed how it will affect them. Our HR team stands ready to assist all impacted employees through this application process.
We believe these actions will improve service for faculty, staff, and students while creating new professional opportunities for our finance colleagues.
We thank you for all of your efforts to support our University.
Sincerely,
David B. Green, Interim Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Robert M. Groves, Provost