January 9, 2019
Dear ORUs and Department Managers:
We wish you a happy 2019 and hope you had a few restful days off! The arrival of this new year also means that research administration, human resources and purchasing have transitioned from central campus to the new service region, which we have named SHARE. The region will service the departments in the the divisions of Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Undergraduate Studies as well as a number of ORUs in the VCR’s office. The goal of this region is simple. To provide you with the services you need in an efficient and friendly manner. We realize that the quality and level of service provided by SHARE is instrumental in delivering our research and teaching mission. In order to get us there we need to jointly change the culture of how we collaborate and we need to identify and fix processes that are broken. In short, we have our work cut out for us and we will only succeed in delivering if we work as a team.
So what is the current state of affairs?
1. Budget. We have received an allocation which holds the number of FTE constant compared to last year (after a small haircut everyone received).
2. Staffing of the region. We have mapped staff to the region and we will very shortly provide you with an up-to-date list of your RA and HR contacts. One of our main goals is to build stronger personal relationships between you and the people you work with in the region.
3. Space. We are actively working on a plan to move the region onto campus and will update you as the plans for such a move are getting concrete.
4. Communication. We will continue with emails like these, to make sure we keep you in the loop on developments. We will keep these short and to the point. There will be a website for the region, which will be rolled out by the end of January. Further, the two of us will hold “coffee hours”, where we invite you to come and stop by to brainstorm ideas, provide Cheers and Jeers or just to say hi. We are also more than happy to come to your department to discuss specific issues related to your department. We would like you to keep in mind that there are two of us and over 70 departments/units in the region, but we will try our best to respond quickly. Finally, in the spirit of building this region together, we need your honest feedback and creative ideas. Call, email, stop by. We want to hear it. Especially in these early days of the region.
5. Research Administration. We are keenly aware that many units in the region currently are not serviced by CSS and need to go through an ORU. We will no longer require faculty to go through an ORU in order to receive research administration services. We want to caution you that we do not have more resources than before, yet making faculty jump through unnecessary hoops by seeking out ORUs willing to handle grants is inefficient. And we hate inefficiencies. Further, we have heard loud and clear that pre and post award support should not be separated, so we will assign a single primary research administrator per faculty member to handle pre and post award aspects of grants.
6. UC Path Rollout. We are getting very close to the UCPath rollout in March. Campus has asked that significant process changes not be made before the rollout, especially in HR. However, we are seeking your input on which processes work well and which ones could be improved. Our ability to implement changes in HR will grow significantly after the UCPath rollout and stabilization.
So this is where we are currently. We look forward to working with you and thank you for helping us make this a successful collaboration.
Teal Sexton (Regional Director) and Max Auffhammer (Regional Associate Dean)
Revised email from 1/9/18