Over the past year, Oregon State University has opened four “business centers” in an effort to cluster finance and accounting and human resources responsibilities in regional offices around campus. The Arts and Sciences, Business and Engineering, Health Sciences and University Administrative business centers were the first to be implemented, with business centers serving Forestry and Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Auxiliary and Activities, and Agriculture and Marine Sciences set to go online by August.

We are beginning to see a reduction in concerns generated by changing our administrative service model for accounting, finance and human resources functions and the extra work involved in implementation of the new business center model.  Even though we have three business center implementations to complete, we have begun the work necessary to ensure achieving the goals for the business center model. As a reminder, the major goals for the business centers are:

1.      Higher quality customer service;
2.      Increased efficiency in transaction processing;
3.      Effectiveness in providing efficient support services for  faculty and administrative efforts;
4.      Generating cost savings or cost avoidance thru effective use of technology and process redesign.

We expect that as we make progress towards these goals, everyone in the Oregon State community will experience fewer days required to process reimbursements, fewer days to make employee appointments (of all types), better vendor relations, timely research budget and accounting processes and reduction in errors associated with these processes.

In a very real sense, OSU is a victim of its own successes. Our rapid growth in enrollment, tremendous growth in research and grant activity and the growth in physical and fiscal assets brought us to the point of needing a new administrative services delivery model. We have confidence the business center model brings the management structure, division of labor, redundancy, depth and training emphasis we need to be successful in achieving our goals. Our mission is simple: freeing up faculty and staff time to be devoted to education, research, and outreach — not administrative processes.

We appreciate the feedback that we have received from faculty, staff, and administrators during the initial implementation phase of the project – positive and critical. There is still understandable skepticism about the value of the new model and its efficiency and effectiveness. While we are just beginning efforts to measure our performance through data-driven metrics and benchmarks, we are seeing evidence that progress is being made in customer service, reduced time to complete financial transactions, and our ability to identify and correct ineffective and or inefficient processes. Early signs of improvement include:

·        The Arts & Sciences Business Center reduced the average number of days to reimburse for travel from 15 in July 2009 to eight in April 2010.
·        The Health Sciences Business center has improved the quality and timeliness of grant reports, communicated more effectively with principal investigators and reduced the number of overspent grants within these three colleges by 80 percent since October 2008.
·        The University Administrative Business Center has shrunk the percentage of invoices paid beyond the net 30-day term from 38 percent in October 2009 to 30 percent in May.
Each implemented business center is actively engaged with their advisory committee or key contacts sharing metrics data and seeking input on areas of concern.

By the end of August you can expect to see all the business centers implemented. To continue making progress over the next six months the business centers will be engaged in the following activities:

1.      Developing communication structures and relationships between the business center and the departments they serve. We must continue to understand the needs and concerns of business center users clarify and communicate the role of the business centers and develop and the communication and protocol that ensure we take full advantage of services provided by the business centers.
2.      Planning the post implementation training program for business center staff and the departments served.  We believe training will improve the quality of service and employee versatility and productivity.
3.      Developing accurate evaluation metrics with the advisory committees and key contacts to aid our evaluation process and identify areas that need improvement. Performance metrics will be developed to help gauge productivity, staffing levels and workload sharing within and across business centers.
4.      Enhancing our technology tools and increasing our use of the improved technology to improve productivity and accuracy. We will concentrate initially on student worker employment and time entry, data mining to support the evaluation and performance metrics, and implementing Banner Workflow to enhance transaction processing and guide process redesign.
5.      Implementing process redesign on processes already identified for evaluation such as the recruitment and hiring process and grant post award setup. We are continuing to look for ways to eliminate unnecessary processes and improve other processes for greater efficiency and providing seamless support to the faculty and staff.

We hope this information has generated thoughts or suggestions on the business centers you would be willing to share. Please call Bob Nettles, Director of Administrative Services, 541-737-9611 or email him at Robert.nettles@oregonstate.edu

Jon Dowd tells how flying to Cleveland to volunteer for the Obama campaign changed his view of the world and himself. (photo: Ed Curtin)

I am not a comfortable flier. I don’t mind much of it except the takeoffs and landings. And the prospect of four of those certainly had my nerves on edge. But this fall, with some vacation time on my hands and campaign news in my brain, I felt compelled to step up and do something that mattered to me — and so I did, flying to the battle ground state of Ohio to volunteer in the projects of Cleveland for the Obama campaign. The take-offs and landings were a small price I’d have to pay.

After an all-day flight, I arrived at a rather upscale strip mall of clothing boutiques and electronics outlets. Feeling upbeat and a little at home, I headed through the parking lot to the huge Ohio for Change storefront and passed a woman on the phone to her insurance agent. Her car window had just been smashed and everything ripped from the dashboard. Not a comforting beginning, and for a guy who’s never been in a Rust Belt inner city before, the incident clouded my expectations and raised some personal fears for the days to come.

My job the next day was to visit with residents in several neighborhoods asking folks if they’ve already early voted or were going to wait until Tuesday, Election Day.

I was a little taken aback at how run-down most of Cleveland was. Building after building was boarded up and vacant. One in five houses in the neighborhoods I was canvassing was condemned and abandoned. These were neighborhoods of poor people. I found myself having to force down a fear of being mugged, robbed and shot.

But at my first door, the people were friendly beyond belief. That there was someone from Oregon on their porch working for the candidate they supported, floored them. And the scene repeated itself at every door. Wearing my Oregon State windbreaker with my Surfers for Obama button was an appealing ice breaker. As the day went on, and in the days to come, kids would clamor for the stickers and buttons I was handing out.  The fear of being in the ‘hood had been lifted by the very people I had been afraid of.

I began noticing how well-kept each home was, the walls that were without graffiti, the sparkling mass-transit system. More importantly, I began noticing how each person I met was glowing with anticipation. And there questions were always this: “Do you think we can pull it off?” It was always the expression of “we,” poor African-American big city dwellers and me, a white guy from Oregon.

I recently turned 57, and while that may not be old, I am sometimes confronted with the realization that there might not be too many years for me to make an impact on the world. I’ll probably never be a Lincoln, a Gandhi, a Pauling or a King, and I may never write a book. But there are little things I can do — little things we can do collectively that can add up to great things.

Volunteering allowed me to tell myself: “I made a difference.” Even if the other candidate had won, I had forced myself to do something different, and I had played my part in doing my part.

When I arrived home, I found my wife had created a ‘You are my HERO’ poster for me. Yes, it means a lot that she’s proud of me. But nobody is more proud of me that I am.

Jon Dowd is an information technology consultant for the Community Network at Oregon State University.

              ~ Terryl Ross

As our campus moves forward on its community and diversity journey, I now have better insight about the opportunities and challenges we face. 

Lesson Learned: Community Before Diversity

 First and foremost, I have made many mistakes in this position, the biggest being that I led with “diversity” rather than “community.” My work has two distinct sides: one that is celebratory and addresses our commonalities, and other that investigates institutional bias and “-isms.”  Trust is the single most important component in diversity work, and it rarely comes from the latter.  And at Oregon State, we simply have too many units that do not have enough community within them to get to the real diversity work that needs to be done. This is why I am now devoting more time and resources to community-building, fostering authentic dialogues, and communications.  

Biggest Disappointment: The Way Some People Treat Each Other

 I get to talk with literally thousands of OSU students, faculty, and staff each year, and more than anything else, I’m disappointed in the way some people treat each other. As a former Army officer, I walked among people with loaded guns who could have solved problems with a pull on the trigger. But it didn’t take me long to learn that people didn’t have to like someone to be able to work with them.

At OSU, I’m astonished at the number of people who cannot work with each other because of something someone said, something that happened years ago, something that didn’t agree with them. And there are way too many people who sit on the fence telling me what other people need to do and who have built-in excuses why they cannot do it themselves.

My personal low moment was when I looked into the tearful eyes of a small group of students who wondered aloud why this campus does not care about them. It broke my heart.  These students are someone’s children, people, and we need to do a better job of being their stewards. 

What Excites Me Most: Walking the Talk

 Disappointments happen, but what is working at Oregon State with diversity far outweighs what is not working.  I’m excited about all the people on this campus who are walking their talk and helping us to be more welcoming and inclusive.  I have personally witnessed amazing transformations by lots of people, particularly in the last two years.

Three campus units have rewritten their diversity action plans.  Individuals are volunteering to attend diversity-related workshops and events they never would have attended years ago.  Lots of units are collaborating with each other for the first time.

More than anything else, I am excited by the students who are doing diversity work. They are out there, and my office needs to do a better job of telling their stories and sharing the impressive diversity-related actions they are making OSU. Because once they realize that diversity is a 21st century life skill and not a politically correct issue, hear them roar and get out of their way! 

Vision of the Future: A Destination of Choice

Two of the many good things President Ed Ray presents really excite me: (1) our greatest contribution to the state of Oregon is our graduates and (2) OSU can be a university “destination of choice” for many more people.

When we incorporated these themes into our campus diversity action plan a few years ago, the number one complaint was that the plan was too lofty, too unrealistic.  I beg to differ.
 
When we do our diversity work right, our units and our classrooms will feel different.  People from all backgrounds will want to come here and they will stay here longer.  Better yet, they will go back to their home communities and tell others to come to OSU.  It will take a long time for OSU to look the way we want it to look, but getting it to feel the way we want it to feel is achievable — now.
 
I truly believe that we at Oregon State are headed in the right direction and that if just a few more people get actively involved in our diversity effort, a tipping point will be reached and a whole new wave of students and faculty and staff will join us because of what we are doing.   OSU, in fact, will become their “destination of choice.”

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Terryl J. Ross is director of the President’s Office of Community and Diversity at Oregon State University. He recently accepted for OSU the “Committed to Diversity” Award given by Minority Access Inc. for the university’s initiatives and best practices to create diversity on campus.  

“Commentary” is a regular feature of LIFE@OSU, offered to promote civil dialog and an open exchange of ideas on campus. We encourage you to comment on this and other stories already appearing in our print and web editions. Browse over to oregonstate.edu/lifeatosu and click on the “comment” link at the end of each piece. Also, we invite submissions and suggestions of articles such as this Commentary, along with our other regular features — LIFE/Work, Mentors, OSU Around Oregon, and In the Classroom – and news and features stories that would be of interest to the staff and faculty of Oregon State University. Send them to lifeatosu@oregonstate.edu. Thank you. — Editor

Luanne Lawrence, vice president of University Advancement. (photo: Jim Folts)

When I announced to family and friends four years ago that I would be leaving our home in Maine to come to Oregon State University, I received electronic, telephone and in-person high-fives. My academic friends on the east coast could cite the accomplishments of many OSU faculty. My athletics friends gave me the thumbs up for coming to a PAC-10 university. My family envied my new life in beautiful Oregon.

And when I arrived in Corvallis and got to know the top ranked faculty in areas like agriculture and forestry and conservation biology (yes, No. 1 ranked and no specific academic program in this area), I was both humbled and eager to figure out how to tell these stories far and wide. When I discovered the staff, who go so far out of their way to help students achieve their dreams, I was struck by their modesty in seeing that what they were doing was so far above and beyond. And, meeting the faculty and staff in our extension offices and experiment stations has made me a more mindful leader – understanding the diverse and pressing needs of Oregon through their work and their contributions to their communities.

I have never lost that sense of wonder and excitement. Every year as I travel through the state and see its changing landscapes, varied cultures and honest people, I am proud that I have become an Oregonian. When I am working at regional and national levels, I feel the respect that OSU has in the larger world. Working at OSU in a position where our Division of University Advancement tells the stories of the incredible people who work, teach, study and research here, has been an honor.

To further honor all of you who make meager resources and too many office hours work to the benefit of OSU, we have created LIFE@OSU, a new biweekly publication that will help us all know each other a little better and to connect in new and different ways. This publication will replace OSU This Week and will bring more stories that help us appreciate those around us. Sometimes we will introduce you to people in personal ways – talking about their unique lifestyles. Sometimes we will tell the story of careful research and end-results from the labor of addressing some of the state’s and nation’s most pressing questions. And sometimes we will introduce you to people with jobs that are fun, interesting and sometimes invisible to us, but that play incredible roles in our infrastructure. Produced through the Department of News and Communication Services, this new internal newsletter can also be found on the Web at: oregonstate.edu/lifeatosu.

We have reached so many milestones as a university – two national baseball championships; a record-breaking year for research funding; national rankings for academic programs and sustainability initiatives; faculty and staff receiving international awards. Now we hope that LIFE@OSU will celebrate the talent behind those achievements and that you will feel a stronger sense of Beaver pride by coming to know these individuals a little better.

Please take the time to send us comments on the new publication. Letters to the editor are welcomed at lifeatosu@oregonstate.edu, and we are eager to also create online dialogues about our stories at our Web site. But most of all, we hope that you will take time with each issue and that when you see the people we write about in person and on campus, tell them that you appreciate them and all that they do and join us in celebrating the amazing faculty and staff at OSU.

Luanne Lawrence is vice president of University Advancement for OSU.