Updates from the Office of the Provost

Sent: January 21, 2021

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to take this opportunity to present some positive changes I've made in our office as we continue finding ways to help our division improve communications, implement process efficiencies, improve access to information, and offer support on change implementation.

We have merged our Academic Budget and Planning Unit into a new larger unit called Academic Business & Strategic Operations, or ABSO as we are now used to calling it!

ABSO is dedicated to organizational success across the Division of Academic Affairs. Using Change Management as a guide, we are working to improve our project management and our budget services to achieve efficiencies in many areas.

We are supporting the colleges and units to help address problems, assess changes, generate process improvements and create meaningful transformation through campus-wide collaboration in personnel, facilities, budget, to name a few. ABSO is also focused on building stronger relationships with the other divisions across campus to continue supporting shared services if appropriate. 

Last year, we began the migration from our old website to the new one and we have now added access to an internal site we are calling the AA Resource Hub. What started as a hub for ABSO to communicate information to the colleges has now grown into something much bigger. As you all know, I want us to be as transparent as possible and improve communications so my team is using the AA Resource Hub to explain things, offer instructions, share data as a starting point. It grows almost daily so please check it out! 

The last thing I would like to introduce, as part of our communication improvement, is our ABSO News and Updates Blog. This blog will be used to communicate process updates, notes, and changes.  It can be found in the ABSO section on the Office of the Provost’s website. 
 
We have some new people in the office so please check out our Org Chart here [pdf]. Please let me or my team know if you have any questions or feedback you would like to share.

Sincerely,
Vin