Golding

Stephen T. Golding, Cornell's Samuel W. Bodman Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration, has unveiled a functional reorganization of the university's Division of Finance and Administration (CUFA). The streamlining, which merges existing functions and establishes new offices, will enable the division to deliver greater expertise, especially in areas critical to fulfilling the university's priorities, including management of institutional risk, data oversight, facilities and finance.

"Our mission is to nurture and deploy the university's resources in support of its missions of teaching, research and service to the people of New York," Golding said. "With this realignment, the division is now better able to keep pace with the rapidly changing needs of the Cornell campus and support the needs of its colleges and departments."

The reorganization will promote greater management transparency and not necessitate job cuts or layoffs. The new structures will ensure that mission-critical services are better aligned to meet the needs of clients throughout the university.

The reorganization highlights include:

• merging the Office of the Treasurer into the Department of Finance. This merging will create a more traditional financial organization structure similar to Cornell's peer group, where a vice president for finance (Joanne DeStefano) leads a unit that encompasses the treasurer (Pat Johnson) and a full-time comptroller. This structure will provide better oversight of the university's financial resources and the expertise to guide institutional financial practices in the future.
• establishing a new Department of Safety, Health and Environmental Risk Management (SHERM). The Department of Business Services will be restructured into a new Department of Safety, Health and Environmental Risk Management (SHERM) under the leadership of Rich McDaniel, vice president for business services and environmental safety. The new organization will include Environmental Health and Safety, the Office of Environmental Compliance, Cornell Police and the Office of Risk Management. The new department ensures that the university has an integrated approach to safety, environmental health and risk management across campus.
• establishing a new Office of Environmental Compliance and Sustainability. This new office, headed by Bert Bland, the current director of the Office of Environmental Compliance (ECO), will include Cornell's sustainability coordinator and ECO and will direct the university's administrative sustainability initiative.
• integrating Transportation and Mail Services into the Division of Facilities Services. This consolidation will provide better coordination with other campus facility initiatives.

An important aspect of the reorganization is to eliminate unnecessary administrative distinctions that exist between individual CUFA operating units, without eroding essential functionality, Golding says. Hence, the new organization will adopt an administrative model more closely aligned with the central offices that provide these essential services, which in turn will improve compliance with university policies and procedures and facilitate future resource allocation decisions.

More complete information on the reorganization can be found at the division's Web site at http://www.cufa.cornell.edu.