• Fundamental to the University’s ability to carry out its academic programs is an extensive and complex set of systems that provide student support (e.g., admissions, registration), academic support (e.g., curriculum management, research services), and the management of fiscal, technological, human, and physical resources.
• At present, these support and management systems are not as effective as they could and should be, a situation that significantly hampers the University’s academic and support community in the pursuit of its academic mission.
• The ways in which support and management systems have evolved as the University has grown have often produced inefficiencies and confusion and have not kept pace with technology.
• Correcting the present systems will require careful attention to leadership, decision-making, streamlining processes, and correctly implementing and upgrading information technology.
• The University must lead from the top, manage from the middle, and make decisions at the lowest level possible.
• A clearer understanding of institutional leadership and how meaningful input is encouraged and integrated will strengthen a campus culture of inclusion and trust.
• To support quality faculty and staff, the University must establish clear roles and expectations; provide communication, training and other support resources; and align rewards and incentives to be consistent with desired outcomes.
• Data should be integrated and should support UNM students and personnel, as well as support decision-making and strategic planning.
• Processes need to be re-designed so transactions can be self-initiated and completed accurately in a timely fashion, when and where it is convenient.
• The University needs to "re-engineer" processes to eliminate redundancy, multiple approvals, and other non-value added steps.
• The University must deploy and maintain the necessary technology, including the information infrastructure, to enable the needed improvements in support and management systems.
• Academic Affairs, the Health Sciences Center, and the Branch Campuses must be engaged in bringing about the necessary changes in support and management systems, and assume their appropriate roles in assisting the process from their respective units.

2. introduction and executive summary

The mission statement of the University of New Mexico begins, "[t]he University will engage students, faculty, and staff in its comprehensive educational, research, and service programs." The remainder of the mission statement elaborates on these programs, making it clear that, at our core, we focus upon the academic activities of teaching, research, and service. Fundamental to our ability to carry out our academic activities is an extensive and complex set of systems that provide student support (e.g., admissions, registration), academic support (e.g., curriculum management, research services, instructional technologies), and the management of fiscal, technological, human, and physical resources. At present, these support and management systems are not as effective as they could and should be, a situation that significantly hampers the University’s academic and support community in the pursuit of our academic mission. Perhaps the ultimate source of this state of affairs stems from the University’s growth in almost all dimensions, i.e., enrollment, research, and generally the number of programs across campus. The ways in which support and management systems have responded to this growth has often produced inefficiencies and confusion. These have resulted as the effects of instituting non-valued added processes, establishing ad hoc policies and procedures that are not effective, and widespread duplication of effort and data. The inefficiencies and confusion have been compounded by our not having kept pace with state-of-the-art information and instructional technologies, while at the same time using the available technology to entrench us further in poor processes and duplication of effort.

The consequences of support and management systems not being what they should are readily apparent in examples around us: complexity in purchasing even simple items, enrollment shortfalls, problems in class scheduling, etc. Such undesirable outcomes lead to student, faculty, and staff members’ frustration as well as understandable concern on the part of regents, legislators, and others. At the same time, the patent absurdity of much of the anecdotal data lead many to think that the "fix" must be correspondingly simple. This is definitely not the case. Correcting the present systems will require careful attention to three major areas: (1) governance (e.g., leadership, decision making); (2) streamlining processes; and (3) correctly implementing and upgrading information technology. Changing these aspects will not be easy. Many of the current governance practices and existing processes are mired in history and University culture. Compounding this is the substantial cost of implementing the most cost-efficient and effective information technology. Further complicating the difficulties in improving each of these areas are the often-subtle interactions among the individual areas. These interactions necessitate a comprehensive overhaul of all three areas in concert, with careful attention to achieving real improvement overall.

To realize the goals implicit in strategic direction on management/administration, the University must commit first to understanding the complex and interrelated issues that underlie the existing inadequate support and management systems. Then, based upon this understanding, the University must decide on the proper set of objectives and tactics therein to accomplish the necessary changes. This essay provides the groundwork for the Strategic Planning Task Force to move forward along this strategic direction. Underlying what we have written is the assumption that student support, academic support, and management systems exist primarily to support and enhance the core academic mission of the University. In Section 2, we review the overall scope of support and management activities that are comprehended by this strategic direction. Also in this section we take up the important issues of the interfaces between these systems and the users in academic affairs and at the branch campuses. In Section 3, we review the current state of the support and management functions, highlighting as much as possible the root causes for the problems that exist. Based upon our analysis of these causes and our knowledge of how things can be improved, we present in Section 4 a vision of the future.

We wish to underscore that revamping the support and management systems so that they provide the level and quality of service commensurate with that of our academic programs will not be simple and will require commitment to address three challenges: changing the institutional climate in which decisions are made, streamlining of our processes, and finding substantial financial resources. The first two challenges can be achieved with institutional fortitude while the third carries a substantial price tag. This last point confronts the omnipresent issue of our scarce financial resources. We recognize that the issue of resources is addressed principally within the domain of Strategic Direction #6. However, it is readily apparent that if the acute problems caused by the present deficiencies in our support and management systems are to be ameliorated, the necessary resources will have to be made available. This, in turn, will only be possible after a careful reexamination and balancing of the breadth of what the University takes on and the resources available to support that breadth.

 

3. Scope OF STRATEGIC DIRECTION ON MANAGEMENT/

ADMINISTRATION

To avoid ambiguity and confusion, we have chosen not to use the traditional UNM functional reporting lines (i.e., Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Business and Finance). Rather, we define here the scope of our work by looking more broadly at "systems." To that end, we identified three categories of systems that are critical for the University to deliver its instructional, research, and service missions. Those three system categories are student support, academic support, and management systems. Each is briefly described as follows, along with some pertinent information on its present state.

1. Student Support Systems

Among the student support systems are the student information systems. The core of the current student information system was developed in the early 1980’s and implemented in 1983. The first pieces implemented were Admissions, Registration and Student Records. The Financial Aid system was an independently purchased software package, which has been modified over time, and the Prospective Student System was developed in the late 1980’s. Student support systems also include Bursars (cashiers and student accounts), academic advising, degree audit and graduation, and counseling services, ethnic, women’s and College Enrichment Programs offering academic and cultural support. Other student support services include the Student Health Center, Police, and Housing.

The core functions in the Student Support Systems cross over several systems with components supporting the recruitment of undergraduate students, admissions for undergraduate and international students, transfer credit evaluation, document imaging, student records, class scheduling, course registration, grade reporting, degree auditing, academic advising, financial aid application processing, scholarship application processing, awarding of financial aid and scholarships, disbursement & crediting of funds to student accounts, student employment, monitoring of Satisfactory Academic Progress, student billing, student accounts receivable, and cashiering.

2. Academic Support Systems

Academic Support Systems are those that enable faculty to teach and to conduct research, as well as those that support student learning. The functions of academic support systems include a wide array of processes, such as: faculty recruitment and retention, curriculum management, knowledge management, information and instructional technologies/support, and research. The processes deal with the daily operations: scheduling a classroom; chalk in every classroom; workstation for faculty and staff member; locating a projector that works with the resolution of a new laptop; finding a book on the library shelf; sending a course assignment as an email attachment; finding an electronic version of the right grant form, etc.

The processes also include those that are highly complex, involve newer technologies, and are difficult to plan and support. Examples include redesigning curriculum for web-based delivery; putting materials on electronic reserves; providing electronic grant submission and an integrated grants management environment; and upgrading, and integrating the UNM network (voice/video/data) environment; Internet-based conferencing; and enhanced courses.

There are several additional administrative offices that provide additional academic and student support. The Office of Graduate Studies (OGS) provides support for many graduate programs around the campus. The University Libraries and other knowledge management services are critical to the academic mission. The Office of Research Services (ORS) in Academic Affairs and the HSC Pre-award Administration Office in the Health Sciences Center, provide information for investigators about submission of proposals and dissemination of awards. ORS also provides support for the ever-increasing burden of compliance matters, such as conflicts of interest, animal care, and human subject review. Research Services regularly interacts with Principal Investigators (faculty, staff and some students) and support staff representing the investigators in the development and processing of sponsored program proposals. Other services include identification of funding sources, administrative processing of proposals, assistance with submission to funding agencies, compliance reviews, negotiation of awards with agencies, internal processing of awards to the post-award administrators, assistance with administrative matters related to extensions, continuations, and supplements, licensing of the University’s intellectual properties, legal support services for research related activities, and public service activities like the Science Fair, etc.

Responsibility for the allocation of the resources generated through recovery of indirect costs from sponsored projects falls to this function as well. Among the many challenges of this function are responsible management of these funds to support and encourage new research initiatives, while attempting to meet cost sharing requirements for worthy projects and to assure an adequate infrastructure to support this growing research activity.

3. Management Systems

For purposes of this report, management systems are intended to include those institution wide support services that are necessary for the University to manage its fiscal, technological, human, and physical resources. Specifically, management systems include such functional areas as Auxiliary Enterprises, Budget Office, Computer and Information Resources and Technology (CIRT), Controller’s Office, Facility Planning, Human Resources, Payroll, Physical Plant, Policy Development, Purchasing and Materiel Management, Real Estate, and Risk Management.

Examples of the wide range of responsibilities reflected in these management systems include preparation of the University’s legislative request, development of the University budget, and oversight of capital funds and long-term debt obligations; administration of all accounting transactions (payroll, grants and contacts, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and plant fund accounting); coordination of space utilization, oversight of the design and construction of all new facilities, maintenance, housekeeping, grounds services, and management of the utility services; support of email attachments, Internet access, Enterprise servers and administrative systems, and Web pages; coordination of staff recruitment, compensation, and training and administration of employer-sponsored benefits programs; procurement of all equipment, supplies and professional services, campus mail, surplus property, and recycling programs; oversight of all real property and the development of land use plans; campus safety, environmental health, and hazardous waste management, property, liability and worker’s compensation insurance; and management of Food and Housing Services, Vending Services, Printing Plant, Bookstore, Lobo ID Card, Parking and Transportation Services, Telecommunications, Ticketing Services, and Public Events.

2.4 Interfaces to Academic Affairs and Health Sciences Center

It is important to consider not only the student, academic and management support systems just described, but also the users of these systems found throughout the University, principally in the various academic departments and units of Academic Affairs and in Health Sciences. There are distinct differences between Academic Affairs and Health Sciences that stem from Health Sciences’ mandate to meet the unique needs and growing demands of their constituencies, and this requires in some instances that Health Sciences have their own support and management systems.

Given the current nature of these support systems, academic departments have been required to add additional staff and devote precious resources to interact effectively with these central systems. These Academic Affairs staff serve as the necessary and appropriate interfaces between the teaching, research, and service activities and the support and management functions. However, this has resulted in parallel efforts that may actually contribute to the inefficiencies and complexities in how support and management functions operate. The duplications result when these organizations attempt to meet the unique needs and growing demands for their services. Any consideration of improvements in support and management functions must necessarily include interfaces with departments and units, particularly addressing the question of whether there is a duplication of effort that can and should be avoided.

2.5 Branch Campus Interfaces

The State of New Mexico realized in the mid-1960’s the acute need and growing demand for access to higher education. Access to accredited postsecondary education was geographically limited at that time. In an effort to meet this need, enabling legislation was passed to support the creation of two-year colleges within the state to ensure more equitably distributed geographic access to higher education and vocational education. Several pathways were opened to allow communities to create various types of local community/junior/branch college districts. All of these districts would be partially supported by a local mill levy and would also have a local advisory board. The establishment of these new institutions also created jobs and boosted economic development within these local college districts.

A branch college could be established through a partnership with one of the six existing four-year universities. This method allowed the branches access to most of the services of the four-year institution while assuring consistency and transferability of the course work in the academic areas. These units were also chartered to provide vocational training in areas identified by the local community.

Using this new tool for delivery of educational services, three branches were created to affiliate with the University of New Mexico. The Gallup campus was established in the mid-1960’s. The Los Alamos and Valencia campuses began operation in the early 1980’s. In addition, education centers have been established in Taos and Santa Fe. The establishment of the branch infrastructure also allowed UNM to begin offering coursework in these areas.

Each branch is led by an Executive Director who reports directly to the Provost. Branches interface with many of the academic, student and management support systems of the UNM Main Campus. Branches also duplicate, on a smaller scale, many of the systems offices found on the main campus. (Examples: student advisement, registration, financial aid, faculty contracts, and business systems such as cashiers, purchasing, etc.) Students enrolling at a branch campus can complete their enrollment, registration, and financial transactions locally. This is true even if the student is enrolled on more than one campus. The branch office provides the interface with its Main Campus counterpart. This coordination attempts to provide a seamless interface for the student.

 

5. Current state of management and support functions

Over the past 17 years elements have been developed and added to the core student information system in an effort to improve service and remain current as new technologies became available. These upgrades included such services as telephone and Web registration, telephone and Web grade report access, an electronic application for admission, an automated degree audit system with a transfer credit evaluation component, and document imaging. Thus, while the core system has remained static over time, attempts have been made to provide improved service to students via new technology.

The greatest challenge of the current system is that, because it was developed incrementally, it does not offer a fully integrated continuum of services and data required by students, by the offices and individuals who work with students, and by those offices who collect and report data.

At UNM, student support units manage an enormous number of transactions. Thousands of students are recruited and admitted each year. Over a thousand classes are scheduled. Tens of thousands of students are registered and grades are reported. Several thousand students reside in University housing. Millions of dollars in tuition and fees are collected and a much larger amount of student financial aid is awarded and disbursed each semester.

The sheer increase in information flow and paperwork associated with recent increases in enrollment places unprecedented strain on our processes at a time when student and parent expectations are significantly increasing. Presently, too few student support transactions can be initiated directly by the student. In many cases the student must go to the appropriate office and complete a transaction assisted by a staff member. Too many transactions still occur manually. Students are unable to complete most service transactions at a single location at the same time.

A fundamental problem is that the current system was designed to support a traditional, centralized, rule-driven, hierarchical system of higher education, as demonstrated by publications and catalogs elaborating procedures and processes for determining eligibility for access to programs and resources of the University. Student processes are generally perceived as too slow, inflexible, and not well coordinated.

To illustrate how these problems can manifest themselves, we provide the following example.

The student in this example was born and raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He graduated near the top of his class from a Los Alamos high school and applied to UNM and to Colorado State University, planning to become an engineer. UNM Financial Aid staff received an application for need-based financial aid from him and immediately sent a letter informing him that he needed to be admitted to a degree-granting program in order to receive financial aid. This occurred at the end of February. He did not respond immediately, and 30 days later a second letter was sent to which he responded. He responded by providing a copy of a letter from the UNM School of Engineering that informed him of his acceptance into one of its programs. That acceptance letter was dated in January. Financial Aid (FA) staff received the response from the student in April and checked the Student Information System (SIS) to find that he was still classified in a non-degree status. FA staff provided a copy of the acceptance letter to the Admissions office to update his status. His status was updated and he was offered a financial aid award the next day. About two weeks later, a letter from his mother was received, to inquire about why he had not been awarded a Bridge or Lottery Scholarship. A quick check of the SIS indicated that the student was classified as a non-resident. Non-residents are not eligible for the Bridge or Lottery Success Scholarships. A more in-depth investigation revealed that the student had not submitted some needed information to Admissions to complete his classification as a resident for tuition purposes, and he was placed in the default status of non-resident.

The Financial Aid Management System worked correctly each time in denying an award because certain conditions were not met. However, to the family it appeared that UNM’s processes were bureaucratic and not easy to negotiate. UNM lost this student to Colorado State, according to his mother, because of this and several other "dysfunctional" experiences they had with UNM.

When academic support systems work well, they are unobtrusive and almost taken for granted. If these processes deteriorate or are not integrated with the way faculty expect to teach and conduct research, they compromise faculty productivity and generally make their jobs more difficult. When the processes interfere with student learning, students become frustrated, dissatisfied, and often unsuccessful. In both cases, we fail at our core mission.

Because many of these systems have elements that are decentralized or distributed, the processes often appear diffuse. If the central processes break down, departments quickly build "work-arounds" and create services at the departmental level. Faculty carry chalk to class; departments buy equipment that should be provided by the central level; departmental library collections are purchased; additional departmental staff are hired to compensate for the lack of service at the central level.

Many units and their administrators know that they duplicate the activities of the central offices. Examples of overlapping responsibilities abound, e.g., budgeting, financial management, human resources, faculty hiring, and research administration. In some cases there is overlap; however, much of the responsibility has been decentralized in these areas. Department Chairs at UNM already have the authority to make significant decisions in matters of resource allocations (financial and human resource positions) within their own departments. Academic decisions involving students are made primarily at the department or college/school level. Course offerings and degree requirements are primarily initiated at the department and college/school level. Faculty hiring and tenure decisions are also made primarily at this level. There is a relatively low level of involvement by the Provost’s Office unless a major problem is brought to its attention. The primary involvement of the Provost’s Office, in most cases, is a review of procedure. While large departments tend to provide these functions themselves, smaller departments oftentimes depend on the central offices to provide the support they are unable to afford.

Because improvements of these processes require strategic direction, cut across departmental lines, require significant new resources and ultimately shifts in resources, changes are often slow to be implemented.

As with the student support systems, the core processes and information systems supporting management activities are about twenty years old and have been heavily modified over time. Individual aspects of the system have been upgraded, but those upgrades are not well integrated. This has resulted in functional and data "silos" that work well independently but are inadequate to meet the growing demands on the processes and increasing expectations for access to and accuracy of information. The dramatic growth in research dollars coming to UNM has had significant impact on management systems. The regulatory environment has also increased in complexity, and the need to demonstrate compliance has driven many management system modifications in recent years.

Important insight into the current state of management functions can be gleaned from the Electronic Management Information Systems (EMIS) Project, which began in 1997. For this project, "Reengineering Teams" were formed for each business process to explore how it could be improved. These were "cross-functional" teams including individuals from the central administrative offices, academic and research departments, and faculty members. An outside reengineering and process control consultant was retained to assist the teams in their reengineering efforts. Using process flowcharting techniques and focus group interviews, the teams developed extensive documentation of the University’s current business processes and the problems associated with them. A summary of the major process issues discovered during the EMIS review of current business systems includes the following seven problems: Non-value-added processes; ad hoc policies and procedures; poor dissemination of information; lack of consistent business practices and procedures; redundant and fragmented data; the existence of "shadow" systems; and lack of accountability.

• Non Value Added Processes

• Ad Hoc Policy and Procedures

• Poor Dissemination of Information

• Lack of consistent business practices and procedures

• Redundant and Fragmented Data

• Shadow Systems

• Lack of Accountability

Perhaps the most telling example of all of the issues discovered during the EMIS project review of the current state of business systems was graphically illustrated when the reengineering teams charted the process steps necessary to purchase a $1,500 personal computer for department use. Beginning with the completion of a departmental requisition form and ending with the vendor payment and tagging of the asset, an incredible bureaucratic "tangle" of people, forms, approvals, and databases emerged. The purchase of this $1,500 PC requires:

• 22 people,
• 9 separate non-integrated databases, and
• 7 different forms (many with 4 or 5 parts)

The most disturbing realization made during the EMIS analysis was the huge amount of resources (people, time, and money) that was being consumed in our academic and research areas just to carry out these business processes -- resources that should be devoted to more mission specific, student centered activities.

To summarize the current state, we suspect that the issues identified during the EMIS project that plague the management systems will also be found in the student and academic support systems. Evaluation of student support systems using the EMIS methodology has just begun; final results are not yet available. There are no similar initiatives underway to evaluate the academic support systems.

4. What we are currently doing well

Despite the dismal state of our current systems as described above, the University has supported a threefold increase in sponsored research without increases in staffing in the central offices. The University’s financial status is sound as evidenced by positive audit findings, an increase in our bond ratings, and no significant findings of non-compliance in our sponsored program activities. This is primarily due to the caliber of the people at UNM who have managed to work outdated systems beyond their capacity.

1. Vision of the Future

As the committee moves this discussion from the current state of affairs to the vision of the future, we reiterate our fundamental assumption: that student, academic, and management systems exist for the principal purpose of supporting and enhancing the core mission of the University. All of our support and management systems must be focused on carrying out the University’s instructional, research, and service missions. These support systems will never be effective in a vacuum. To be effective, our support systems must be responsive to the needs of the University and the needs of the University must be, first and foremost, those strategies that are necessary to achieve our core mission.

1. Introduction

The University of New Mexico needs to plan for student and management systems that support its basic academic enterprise. It is clear that UNM needs to develop more efficient and effective methods of providing administrative and operational support to the important functions conducted at the University.

Although there are many and varied solutions to the issues enumerated above, taken broadly, most of them seem to relate to three overarching areas of concern: Governance (e.g. leadership, decision making), Process Design, and Information Technology. It is relatively easy to imagine changes in any one of these areas that would have positive impacts on our management systems and the support functions for faculty, staff, and students. The extremely complex interactions among the three areas are not readily apparent but must be effectively addressed.

Several examples will serve to illustrate this point. If we do not take advantage of technologies that allow for wide sharing of information, then by necessity our organizational structures and patterns of governance must be hierarchical to insure that only those individuals with access to appropriate information are making the University’s business decisions. This then sets the stage for the evolution of business processes with complex routing and approval requirements that can become so cumbersome that we lose sight of the purpose for the original transaction. It is in this environment that "information is power" and keeping it from others becomes a primary objective for many individuals and their offices.

Another example of these interactions involves the application of technology as an "enabler" of the status quo. Technology is not a cure-all. Blindly applied, it can allow us to do the same inappropriate things we've been doing, only faster. This phenomenon, often referred to as "paving the cow paths," can lull an organization into a false sense of efficiency while perpetuating old organizational and business models that are no longer viable in today's competitive business climate. There is no gain to be realized by enhancing our technological capability without also addressing the processes themselves.

Unless all three interactions - governance, processes, and technology - are accounted for in our planning process, our change efforts are apt to be shortsighted, short-lived, and generally misguided. With that understanding in mind, we will now look at some of the strategies that we believe would best help the University develop and sustain effective student, academic, and management systems.

4.2 Governance

We use the term "governance" in this report to capture the overall climate of leadership, participation, and decision-making within the University. The challenges UNM faces regarding these issues have been articulated well in prior strategic planning working papers.

Perhaps the Operations and Management Systems Task Force expressed it best when it stated, "The organization must lead from the top, manage from the middle, and make decisions as close to the customer as possible." Its report calls for constant and clear communication of UNM’s vision, mission, and values from top leadership. Decisions need to be based on institution-wide concerns. That task force recognizes that the President’s Executive Cabinet has begun this process by valuing collaboration, cooperation, and input. It espouses a philosophy of "one University" to be officially adopted throughout UNM. While multiple systems for email, ID cards, and calendaring may have been implemented for good reasons, when viewed from the University perspective, they add cost and confusion. The operations task force calls for leadership to require each level of the University to set its own goals in alignment with institutional goals, to model expected behavior by establishing expectations, to rate performance of those that report to them, and to hold all faculty and staff accountable. The philosophy at UNM should be to hire good people, give them goals, provide them resources, and support them in carrying out their jobs.

The Campus Culture and Climate Task Force presented another significant leadership challenge. It identified the need for clarifying the process of decision-making and roles and responsibilities of various constituency groups when matters of general importance to the University are involved. It calls for clarification of the process to incorporate the Executive Cabinet, Council of Deans, the Planning Council, the Faculty Senate, the Staff Council, and ASUNM in institutional decision-making. This task force recognizes that a clearer understanding of institutional leadership and how meaningful input is encouraged and integrated will strengthen a campus culture of inclusion and trust. We believe that, with roles and responsibilities defined throughout the organization, all groups participating in the process will operate more effectively, their input will be more meaningful, and their contributions more valued.

The Operations and Management Task Force charges the upper administration with building a more effective, strong, well-trained middle management tier in the University. This is necessary in order to reverse the pattern of delegating decisions up the organizational hierarchy. An institution the size of UNM cannot be managed from the top down. Day-to-day operations must be delegated. A healthy, functional management structure is built on trust, with multiple levels of input and feedback, where individuals feel safe to question processes, make decisions, and, on occasion, fail. They observe that UNM needs to foster an environment in which mistakes and failures are accepted as normal in the learning and improving process. Management in these complex and litigious times requires risk taking, and managers will take appropriate risk only if they believe the University will stand behind them.

An organization of UNM’s size and complexity requires a well-defined management structure with clear roles and responsibilities. Within this structure, individuals must be well trained, provided with the resources and tools to succeed, and be recognized, rewarded, and held accountable for their actions.

We applaud the work of these other committees and reiterate the importance of their messages. A strong, healthy climate of shared governance and effective decision-making is essential for the University to meet its mission and critical to set the environment within which our support processes operate.

4.2.3 Professional Development

Inherent in the operation of effective systems is the basic premise that the University is committed to the highest quality of faculty and staff training and performance necessary to accomplish the University’s mission. To support quality faculty and staff we must establish clear roles and expectations; provide communication, training, and other support resources; and align rewards and incentives to be consistent with desired outcomes.

Transferring decisions from the central administration to the program level is predicated on the creation of a new climate of accountability and developing knowledge-based systems and incorporating technology that enables their use. To create a climate of accountability, we must first define new roles and responsibilities, communicate and support the functioning of these new roles, and then enforce and reinforce expectations and outcomes. To have decisions made at the program level, faculty and staff must be knowledgeable about the systems and procedures. They must be aware of all applicable laws, regulations, policies, and procedures. Resources, such as online help screens, user documentation, on-going notification of policy and procedural changes, reminders of user expectations, classroom as well as on-demand computer-based training, are all necessary to help ensure a successful transition to optimal decision making. Once these support systems are in place, then both positive and negative incentives need to be realigned to reinforce these new roles. Positive incentives could include the continued privilege and benefits of using the new faster, simpler systems, price discounts/cost savings, individual recognition, and financial/salary incentives. Included with the delegation of authority must be an increased tolerance for human error. Mistakes will occur. However, knowingly violating policies or abusing the system must carry penalties. Negative consequences could include removal of the privilege of the delegated authority and appropriate disciplinary sanctions.

Also imbedded in this new culture of accountability is the highest quality management. Well articulated in the work of previous strategic planning committees is the need for fostering management styles that promote the University’s vision. The critical role of both faculty and staff managers cannot be overstated. The University must rely on the managers to represent and carry out its mission and values. The need to establish managerial expectations, provide support, and hold managers accountable, is essential to the University’s success.

Transforming student support services requires a cultural change, which must have the active support of the University’s senior leadership. UNM needs to substantially re-engineer processes and policies and make them simpler. We need to design processes and systems to provide students, parents, faculty, and staff with greater access to information that is not required to be held confidential.

Data should be integrated to support UNM students and personnel, and to support decision-making and strategic planning. Central administration must promote the delegation of authority to make decisions at the local level. It should be possible for all of these partners to plan, assess performance, and make smart, productive decisions to further University goals and objectives and professional development.

A user-friendly interface is essential. Many universities are using portals to deliver information in a fashion customizable by the user. The look, feel, and function will quickly become the users’ unique, and personal perspective of the University. It should be a favorable one on all counts.

Many of our student processes need to be re-designed so students can self-initiate transactions and complete them accurately, in a timely fashion, when and where it is convenient for them. Consideration might even be given to consolidation of a broad range of support functions from various units.

Many transactions could be accomplished electronically without the intervention of staff. These transactions should be linked strategically to minimize student runaround. For example, dropping a course should automatically and simultaneously adjust financial aid and credit a student’s account as well as notify the student of the academic and financial consequences of his or her actions.

However, not all activities can be automated. Some still require personal assistance by well-trained advisors. The challenge is to continuously cross-train student-oriented staff so that they can answer a broad array of questions. This is the genesis of the one-stop shopping concept. Our goal could actually be "no-stop shopping," where virtually all routine requests for information and simple transactions would be accomplished seamlessly on the Web by students. Staff would then be free to focus attention on students where there is real value-added by one-on-one consultation.

Early warning systems and supportive intervention services can help promote student success. As students progress academically, they need systematic, high-quality academic and career advisement, timely degree audits, and continued support through graduation.

In the Fall of 1997, the EMIS Project was created by Mr. David McKinney, then Vice President for Business and Finance and Dr. John Sobolewski, Associate Vice President for CIRT, in order to reengineer the University’s purchasing, accounts payable, fixed assets, and hiring processes. A steering committee of high-level University administrators, representing business, student, faculty and research concerns was formed and articulated a series of "Guiding Principles." A list of those guiding principles is provided in Appendix B. These guiding principles become evident in the major findings from the project. Those include:

• The first step in any process re-engineering should always be a thorough analysis of the current process. Once the process is broken down into its constituent steps and tasks, then a number of questions can be posed, the answers to which may point us in the direction of possible improvement. For example, "Which of these steps add value to the end product that the customer would be willing to pay for?" This sort of "value added" analysis will often reveal that many steps in a non-reengineered process have no value whatsoever to the final customer. Examples of non-value added steps include logging, routing, reviewing, approving, holding, copying, etc. These activities, although not adding value, oftentimes are responsible for a majority of a process's cycle time. Estimates of this non-valued time as high as 80-90% are not unusual.
• Oftentimes masquerading as an approval in a process is a need for information, i.e., an administrator with a need to keep tabs on hiring activity, requires that every hiring requisition be routed across his or her desk. What we frequently discover is that a periodic report of these activities to the manager is all that is needed to satisfy their information requirements. The ability to produce standard and ad hoc reports for our managers will be a critical factor in their willingness and ability to remove themselves from a routine business process. The ability to generate these reports presupposes two factors: (1) we have captured and stored the necessary data in a data warehouse and (2) the reporting tools we provide to our managers and staff are intuitive and easy to use. Too often these considerations are left until the very end of a process implementation, resulting in quick fixes and patches that satisfy no one. We believe that the University must embrace the data warehouse concept and make it a central consideration in all process improvements. One component of that warehouse that should be given high priority is the creation of a common "person" area. Storing information about a person in a single database would be a major step forward in the standardization and integrity of our data systems.
• Many of our processes have been designed to catch occasional exceptions or errors, thus requiring all transactions to follow a long and tortured approval path. If one accepts that, given the proper information and training, most people will do the right thing, this business model becomes unnecessarily cumbersome. In light of this, we feel that the University would be well advised to embrace a "post-audit" philosophy in many of its business and administrative processes. There will always be a few decisions that hold the potential for irreparable harm to the University and which must be pre-approved. These notwithstanding, many of our process times could be cut from days and weeks to minutes and hours if only we were willing to trust, but verify. Of course, implicit in this philosophical shift would have to be a realization of the need for and the commitment to impose consequences on individuals who consciously and willfully abuse their authority. This will not be an easy change for a culture that values the ability to fix almost every mistake, that separates individuals from their actions, and that uses complex approval processes to give the illusion of accountability.

• Data should be considered an institutional resource that is captured electronically and is universally available in standard formats without duplicative entry or data redundancy. Rather than restricting access to data until a user can prove a need-to-know rationale, we should consider all data open information unless it is required to be kept confidential.
• Accountability for procurement, reimbursement and hiring decisions should be more distributed with movement toward more decentralized accountability. Several potential new roles were identified by the EMIS project Steering Committee that would help implement these changes. This approach of using a single approval beyond the initiator of the transaction is often referred to as a "manger plus one" approval process. Appendix A contains a matrix developed during the EMIS project as an initial attempt to define these new roles.
• Risk assessments should be made on major transactions to determine the need for prior review and approval. Training of all managers should become mandated to assure greater familiarity with the policies and procedures of the institution. Post-audit processes should be implemented to assure accountability and stronger disciplinary actions implemented for violations of rules and policies.

The committee recommends that the "EMIS approach" to business process reengineering should be continued and expanded to include student and academic support systems as necessary. Although modern information management technologies should be applied throughout the new processes, elimination of redundant processes, multiple approvals, and other non-value-added steps should take precedence over "reengineering" old processes with new technologies.

UNM should be technology-wise throughout the institution (Main and Branch Campuses). This is becoming increasing critical to support decision making at the lowest possible level, to encourage collaboration across the organization, and to regain competitiveness for recruitment and retention of faculty, staff, and students.

Several strategies will help to insure that UNM stays technologically current and maintains its ability to quickly adapt to emerging technologies.

• Technology and access to technology are equitable by having standardized workstations provided and funded centrally for every faculty and staff member, and by upgrading or replacing them in a planned 3-5 year cycle. Student computer labs are similarly maintained and upgraded.
• A web-based platform, including Internet and intranet, is designated as mission-critical and becomes a strategic component in initiatives for communicating with potential students, faculty recruits, and donors. The platform will also facilitate delivery of its services for business practices and academic and research support practices.

Web-enabled applications are available. Prior to the advent of the web, business applications were required to be installed on a mainframe computer with large amounts application-specific software loaded on each PC used to access the application. This "client/server" model severely constrained the number of possible system users due to the logistical difficulties in keeping client software on PCs up-to-date. In a highly decentralized, non-standardized environment such as UNM, this approach is further complicated by the numerous and different operating environments found on PCs which causes system conflicts when attempting to run the application. To help avoid this problem in the future, UNM should require that all its student, business and administrative systems be web-enabled. This would allow anyone with the equipment and proper security to access and use the application – anytime, anywhere.

• To assure success with its educational, research, and service mission and assure strategic growth throughout the institution, the University of New Mexico will coordinate and manage the physical infrastructure responsible for voice, data, and video. At a minimum, we need to deploy and maintain the appropriate infrastructure campus-wide. To promote sharing of the existing infrastructure and to maximize resources, UNM will explore converging technologies capable of positioning the University near the forefront.
• Major enterprise-wide systems are integrated, such as online business applications for financial transactions (including grants), purchasing, and human resources.
• Faculty incentives abound for exploration, adoption, and use of new technologies.
• Technology exists to support the UNM knowledge management environment that is user-centered and that enriches knowledge-based interactions and decisions.
• An Information Technology Master Plan, which includes the physical communication infrastructure, must be developed through input of technologists and users. To provide development leadership and necessary oversight of this critical element, the authority and coordination for this Plan must be assigned to and coordinated by a single cabinet-level member of the administration.
• Technology and facilities planning go hand in hand. To integrate "bricks and clicks," the Information Technology Master Plan must be integrated with the overall Facility/Infrastructure Master Plan.
• Regardless of technology strategy, it is critical that cost/benefit analyses must begin to be used when investigating new technology solutions. Any decision to install and maintain major business and administrative applications "in-house" should be subjected to a vigorous cost/benefit analysis by comparing the expected costs with the costs of various other strategies (e.g., in-house application writing; licensing off-the-shelf products; or outsourcing to eliminate use of application service providers). The old question of whether to "buy or build" an application has become quite a bit more complex, i.e., should we buy, or rent, or lease, or build our application? Should we run it on our machines or theirs? Should we hire our own staff to maintain the application or should we pay a service provider to do this for us?

Any consideration of the vision of the future would be incomplete without addressing a number of issues related to the units in Academic Affairs, the Health Sciences Center, and the Branch Campuses. One such issue is how best to improve the interfaces between support and management systems and the units in Academic Affairs and the Branches, and, where appropriate, Health Sciences. It is incumbent upon the units to have the trained personnel, appropriate processes, and technology to be as efficient as possible in interactions with support and management systems. At the same time, the units must not duplicate the services of support and management systems. These are not simple issues, and they are not particularly amenable to generalization. Furthermore, there will generally be a range of appropriate solutions to the interface issue to which the units must give careful and coordinated consideration.

Beyond the issue of interfaces, the units in Academic Affairs and at the Branch Campuses must consider how they can be as efficient as possible in carrying out their programs in teaching, research, and service. Since it is clear that additional resources will be required to implement improvements in the support and management systems that are envisioned in this report, it seems essential that the units using the improved support and management systems consider how they can help to contain costs and find resources. This issue is considered on an institutional level in the next section.

Another point is that the faculty, staff, and students across the campus and at the Branches must be appropriately engaged in designing new processes and systems for student support, academic support, and management functions. Without their thoughtful involvement, the systems will not operate optimally, and in addition, the units will not realize the full benefit of improvement. Finally, we must find a way to respect the differences inherent in the mission of the Health Sciences Center and the Branch Campuses and to make our student, academic, and management support systems more efficient for these locations.

Strategic Direction on Resources (Foster the responsible, effective, strategic, accountable cultivation of human, financial, and physical resources) addresses the issue of resources, particularly their limitation. Nevertheless, we believe it is inappropriate to propose a path that we know will require substantial financial resources without pointing out that these resources have to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" may be found in restricting the breadth of what we do with the intention of having sufficient resources to do what we do well. With that in mind, we conclude with a few thoughts on this thorny problem.

The breadth of the University’s mission is one of the most important factors influencing the development of high performance management systems and academic and student support functions. The broad mission of providing "comprehensive educational, research and service programs," has created a financial crisis affecting the entire institution and threatening the very integrity of education and services offered. As a result every unit competes aggressively for a diminishing amount of funds. Lacking adequate funding, a descending spiral has been created. Units operate at the margin of fiscal sensibility and watch their assets progressively deteriorate. Collectively we drop lower into mediocrity.

The Planning Committee on Financial Affairs identified chronic under-funding, programmatic growth and weak enrollments as the causal factors creating the University’s greatest strategic challenge –managing its resource base. Of these three factors, programmatic growth is most immediately within the University’s control. But to place limits on academic programs would be inconsistent with the mission of comprehensive educational, research, and service programs. It can be argued that, given chronic under-funding, the University would be better served by limiting the number of programs to its level of funding. By focusing on a smaller number of programs with higher quality, the third causal factor – weak enrollments -- might be positively influenced. That is, more students will be drawn to higher quality programs.

The Planning Committee on Undergraduate Education added further insight on the problems associated with the University’s mission. The Committee noted that UNM has a divided identity that tries to balance a role as "New Mexico’s largest community college" with the role of a major research University. The Committee called for more recognition and reward of teaching excellence as a means to bridge this divided identity and to achieve recognition as a leading undergraduate state University. It is this sort of focus that may provide a successful mission and identity for the University of New Mexico.

A more disciplined focus is needed beyond teaching. On the research side, programs have been embraced simply because they promise, but do not always deliver, a revenue stream. It has been suggested that "we have never seen a research program that we didn’t like." At the heart of the matter is a vacuum of accountability and assessment. Research programs seldom undergo longitudinal assessments regarding the merits for continuation or phase-out. On the academic side, the Office of Graduate Studies does implement graduate unit reviews, but no such assessments are undertaken for undergraduate programs. The point is that both research and teaching programs continue regardless of their performance.

By operating beyond its resource base through an excessively broad mission, the University has contributed to its own crisis. Rather than attempting to emulate other large state-funded universities (i.e., the CHE-approved peer comparisons), the University of New Mexico could identify a mission that is consistent with its level of funding and constituent needs. The University has virtually no prospects of receiving funding at the level of support provided for its peer institutions. Therefore, it should seek a unique definition of a Carnegie-level institution. This implies an end to maintaining and expanding programs commensurate with a comprehensive mission. It implies focusing resources and programs to enhance unique education and research, thereby achieving a national and international reputation for innovation in the academic setting.

Any effort to focus the University’s mission will require substantial discipline and discussion. Refocusing the mission requires change, and as a result controversy will arise as specific programs are targeted for development, while others assume a maintenance role or are phased out. In short, focusing the mission requires bold leadership by all constituents. Until such an effort is made, the University will continue to limp along toward mediocrity and crisis.

Understanding this setting is especially important for developing student support, academic support, and management systems. Since most of the University is stretched beyond its resource base, it is not surprising that management systems are also inadequate. Here the problem is more than just under-funding. There has been no systematic effort to develop comprehensive, integrated management systems. Partly the problem stems from the highly decentralized academic structure as the Planning Committee on Operations and Management Systems has previously identified.

The Planning Committee on Operations and Management argued persuasively that the days of "doing business as usual are over" if UNM is to thrive in the future. However, the transition to sophisticated professional management and operating systems – reengineering – is a highly complex endeavor. The broad, all-encompassing mission of the University works against instilling efficient and effective management systems because every program has a justifiable claim for continuation and integration within management and operating systems support. The prevailing academic philosophy that reinforces decentralized decision-making and minimal control and oversight works against our current management processes. Indeed, the very concept of academic freedom at the heart of the University’s intellectual fabric can be misused to stymie adoption of systematic management practices.

The fundamental conclusion from these realities is that, although the University has no choice but to adopt more sophisticated and methodical management practices, virtually the entire institution is philosophically predisposed to eschew such practices. Consequently dynamic conservatism is rampant; that is, there is the appearance of frenetic effort to change things, when in reality very limited change is actually occurring. There is a lot of churning and very little progress. Additionally, change is at the margins, and not comprehensive or reaching great depth. The Planning Committee on Operations and Management Systems underscored that integrated and institution-wide approaches are needed, not just more disjointed incrementalism.

Intelligent management systems and academic and support functions require bold steps toward innovation. Courageous leadership will address the issue of defining a mission that fits better with the University’s context, resources, and constituents. In the absence of substantial increases in resources, a less ambitious mission that addresses constituent needs with existing resources is the prerequisite for introducing changes throughout the University. With a more sensible and focused mission, a meaningful planning process can ensue to identify exactly which programs will be expanded, maintained, and curtailed, and the strategies for achieving these changes. Once a new mission has been articulated, then it is possible to spell out an approach for comprehensively and systematically reengineering management and operations systems.

• The needs of our process users will drive our process and systems design. This "Service 1st" commitment means that our processes will first meet the customer's needs and second will accommodate the regulatory and control needs of the University.

• Decision making will be pushed to the lowest appropriate level in the organization where accountability will be enforced. Reporting of these decisions will be available up to the highest levels of the organization.

• The overall effectiveness and organizational impact of our processes will supersede the needs or desires of any one functional area within a process.

• We will understand how and why individual users benefit from our processes.

• We will decrease the cost and increase the efficiency of our administrative procedures.

• Process interfaces will be as simple and as user friendly as possible for our customers.

• Our processes will easily accommodate future growth and changing business demands.

• Timeliness of transaction processing will be a major indicator of success in every process.

• The number of administrative reviews and approvals will be decreased to the lowest possible number consistent with sound financial stewardship.
• Data will be electronically captured at the earliest reasonable point in every process.