The Process Begins
September 19, 2008
Dear Colleagues:
President Shelton and I have been tremendously impressed by the energy and imagination that people are bringing to the transformation process. Faculty, staff, appointed personnel, and students are gathering across campus to brainstorm on how departments can be reorganized and combined, and some very creative proposals are emerging.
We are all being challenged to reassess how we do business in order to create more synergy and strengthen our core mission. Vice presidents, department heads and business professionals are reviewing business functions in order to increase our efficiency and productivity. A Business Centers Study Team has been formed to assess how we can improve the effectiveness of business processes such as hiring and purchasing. More information will be forthcoming on this group.
Other intercollegiate teams have formed across campus, including these four committees:
Liberal Arts: Mary Wildner-Bassett, Ed Donnerstein, Ron Marx, Maurice Sevigny, Toni Massaro, Paul Portney, Skip Jubb, Carla Stoffle, Juan Garcia, Dave Cox, Patricia MacCorquodale, Tom Miller, and Jan Cervelli, chair
Area Studies: Mary Wildner-Bassett, Patricia MacCorquodale, Maurice Sevigny, Toni Massaro, Paul Portney, Jan Cervelli, Andrew Comrie, Juan Garcia, Tom Miller, and Ed Donnerstein, chair
STEM: Gene Sander, Jim Wyant, Tom Peterson, Steve Goldschmid, Ed Donnerstein, Leslie Tolbert, Gail Burd, and Joaquin Ruiz, chair
Biomedical: Steve Goldschmid, Iman Hakim, Carolyn Murdaugh, Stuart Flynn, Gene Sander, Joaquin Ruiz, Tom Peterson, Jim Wyant, Leslie Tolbert, Gail Burd, and Lyle Bootman, chair
Additional teams have been formed by deans, department heads and faculty from across campus who are brainstorming on how to reorganize units. In my meetings with various groups over the past week, I have been incredibly impressed with the imagination and energy our Transformation Plan has generated. Please know that comprehensive input from students, staff and appointed personnel is vital in any discussion because broad involvement is fundamental to the success of this process.
The whole purpose of this process is to expand our role as one of the premier universities nationally and internationally. Just today, NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday broadcast from the UA Phoenix Science Operations Center, and writers from the Poetry Center hosted Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson on campus. Every day our students are working to advance changes in the world. Tommy Bruce, President, Associated Students of The University of Arizona, is leading a statewide drive to register thousands of student voters, and this week students from The James E. Rogers College of Law were joined by Kenneth Starr, former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, to commemorate Constitution Day. Also this week, over $20 million dollars were generated in new grant funding. That's about a typical week for us! Yet, what is typical sometimes makes it easy to lose sight of what we are accomplishing.
Our latest research triumph this week was the $18.5 million NSF grant that will be used to establish an engineering research center to expand the bandwidth and reduce the cost of the Internet. Stanford and Berkeley will play supporting roles in our center, and our partners will include researchers and teachers from Asia to Europe. This research will contribute to economic development and strengthen our outreach and teaching. Congratulations to the faculty in several departments across campus who have secured this resource to further our student-centered research mission. Such achievements make this a world-class university. Working together, we will use the Transformation Plan to advance our research, improve our teaching, and expand our outreach by improving the efficiency of our operations.
Thank you for stepping up to contribute to the Transformation process this week. I look forward to continuing to learn from your efforts in the weeks ahead.
Meredith Hay