Administrative process improvement update

April 3, 2012

Marmian Grimes

From Pat Pitney, Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services

April 2, 2012

Hopefully, you are all aware of the process improvement initiative underway as part of the Administrative and Support Review process. Two projects are moving forward, Grant Award Setup and the Employee Recruitment Process, each with its own campus-wide project team. In the coming weeks, each team will begin communicating with the key staff and the campus community overall to outline goals, timelines and information needs.

Achieving and documenting measurable cost savings and service improvements is key to the success of these project improvement efforts. To that end, we will be asking for help from the units in two phases – first during an information collection step and later to evaluate potential process improvements. I would appreciate it if you would let your faculty and staff know that we are actively working to improve these processes and if you would also encourage them to participate when contacted by the project teams.

As you might recall, this initiative began as part of the Administrative and Support Review process that evolved from the 2010 Executive Leadership Workshop. One of the goals of the Administrative Support Review Committee was to identify common processes to streamline that would improve overall administrative effectiveness.

After considerable process mapping efforts resulting in very little tangible change, we’ve embarked on a more holistic process improvement approach to produce streamlined processes and administrative efficiency UAF-wide. To this end, six staff members have gone through extensive training to become qualified process improvement facilitators and are guiding these two project teams. We also have an executive level steering committee to assist in the event that policy, regulation and information system issues need to be addressed.

I’ll update you periodically by email on progress of these two projects and future projects.  We will also be setting up a website to keep the campus community informed of the progress; as soon as the website is live, we’ll send you a link to share with your staff.

I sincerely thank those staff members and units already fully engaged in this process and look forward to celebrating the success of these process improvement projects by the end of the fall semester.

Grant Award Set-up Team (also known as GPS: Grants Process Solutions)

• Wanda Bowen, OGCA


• Deby Chapman, CRS


• Nickole Conley, CEM/INE


• Kim Cox, IARC


• Janet Daley, GI


• Angela Gies, SFOS


• Dave Read, Administrative Services (facilitator)


• Mike Cox, Facilities Services (facilitator)

Recruitment Team (also known as HIRED: Human Resources Internal Recruitment Design)

• Derek Bastille, HR


• Inna Conner, HR


• Shelly Hall, HR


• Margo Griffith, IAB


• Donna Laiti, GI


• Julie Larweth, OIT (facilitator)


• Libby Eddy, Registrar (facilitator)

Facilitators (also known as the PIT Crew: Process Improvement Team)

• Mike Cox, Facilities Services


• Libby Eddy, Registrar


• Cathy Ewing, SW Program Management Office


• Pamm Hubbard, Business Office


• Julie Larweth, OIT


• Dave Read, Administrative Services

Steering Committee Members

• Pat Pitney, VCAS


• Kris Racina, UAF Human Resources


• Raaj Kurapati, UAF Financial Services


• Nettie Labelle-Hamer, AVCR


• Karl Kowalski, OIT


• Steve Mullins, OIT Project Management


• Myron Dosch, UA SW Controller (Grant Setup only)


• Donald Smith, UA SW Human Resources (Recruitment only)


• Maggie Griscavage, UAF OGCA (Grant Setup only)