President Frank’s Weekly Perspective – 10.15.12

Good morn­ing.

I hope you had some time to truly enjoy the Fall break. I am remem­ber­ing how nice this time of year is in New Mexico.

120 Days of Lis­ten­ing
Today, I have reached the 120th day of my Lis­ten­ing cam­paign. As I have paused to con­sider every­thing that has taken place dur­ing my first 120 days, it is clear that the lis­ten­ing is far from over. There is much more to be heard, espe­cially from all of you in the cam­pus com­mu­nity. I didn’t real­ize, when I embarked on this cam­paign and vis­ited so many dif­fer­ent con­stituen­cies, that as a new Pres­i­dent, peo­ple wanted to hear from me. What often ended up hap­pen­ing when I went to meet a new group of peo­ple is that I would talk, and then if I was lucky, there might be a few min­utes for me to lis­ten at the end of the meet­ing. In those brief moments I have heard impor­tant and pro­found thoughts and ideas.

How­ever, I need to hear much more; as I see it, we’ve just com­pleted chap­ter one. I am also aware that the story of chap­ter one was ori­ented to the com­mu­nity around us. As I turn the page to chap­ter two, the theme will be ori­ented to hear­ing from you, the com­mu­nity within UNM. My inten­tion is to focus now on lis­ten­ing to fac­ulty, staff and stu­dents. I am begin­ning with an all-faculty meet­ing on Fri­day, Oct. 19 from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Kiva Audi­to­rium in the Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion. Oppor­tu­ni­ties to talk with stu­dents and staff will fol­low in the next weeks, also. I am look­ing for­ward to hear­ing what you have to say.

Respon­si­bil­ity Cen­ter Man­age­ment
I know that there are a lot of ques­tions about the engage­ment process for Respon­si­bil­ity Cen­ter Man­age­ment (RCM) bud­get­ing. We will be hold­ing our first meet­ing on RCM this week. In our dis­cus­sion on RCM at UNM, I ask you to keep in mind that the cur­rent bud­get­ing process has evolved over decades, with so many deals and over­lap­ping sys­tems that it is impos­si­ble to have a clear pic­ture of our cur­rent bud­get evo­lu­tion. We need a bud­get that is based on more trans­par­ent, sim­pler trans­ac­tion rules.

In adopt­ing RCM, we will be able to have a fair, open pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion about our bud­get rules. We will be the bet­ter for it. I sus­pect that some of the con­cern and con­fu­sion in the cur­rent con­ver­sa­tion stems from whether we are dis­cussing the per­for­mance based bud­get­ing or RCM. A very sim­ple expla­na­tion of RCM is as fol­lows: In the RCM, each respon­si­bil­ity cen­ter or col­lege will use stu­dent credit hours, grants and con­tracts, endow­ment and giv­ing, and any other source of income as rev­enue. Costs will con­sist of salaries and expenses. Each unit will need to bal­ance rev­enue, costs and over­head (the costs of non-revenue gen­er­at­ing units). Typ­i­cally a spe­cial fund is cre­ated to cover units that have dif­fi­culty gen­er­at­ing revenue.

In RCM the Deans, Fac­ulty Chairs, and Fac­ulty will be able to make thought­ful and delib­er­a­tive deci­sions on how to advance their pro­grams. We know that there is a wide range of eco­nomic via­bil­ity from depart­ment to depart­ment, and it will be the respon­si­bil­ity of our aca­d­e­mic and admin­is­tra­tive lead­ers and fac­ulty to allo­cate bud­get resources appro­pri­ately across units. Impor­tantly, and fit­ting the UNM cul­ture, RCM moves us from a bud­get model that is dri­ven from the top and cloaked in con­fu­sion, to one that is trans­par­ent and

dri­ven by the faculty

.

With a new kind of vis­i­bil­ity and insight into our UNM bud­get, we can have more can­did and open con­ver­sa­tions with our leg­is­la­tors, with our com­mu­nity, with our phil­an­thropic donors, and with all our sup­port­ers in regard to UNM’s role and respon­si­bil­ity as New Mexico’s flag­ship uni­ver­sity. So, let’s all take a deep breath, wait, take one more, and plunge into the process of achiev­ing finan­cial transparency.

Wel­come back from the break, and have a great week.

Go Lobos!

Bob