The Administrative Resource Review Committee began its efforts to consider the University's staffing levels, management structure and ways to improve the efficiency of work processes at its first meetings, which were held Nov. 5 and 10.Chaired by Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Apfel, the committee members are Vice President for Human Resources Scott Bemis, Vice President for Budget and Planning Fran Drolette, Prof. Sarah Mead (MUS), Executive Director for Media and Public Affairs Dennis Nealon, Assistant Vice President for Students and Enrollment Frank Urso, Vice President for Development Myles Weisenberg and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Michaele Whelan.

The committee's charter states that it intends to review "overall trends relative to staffing levels and other administrative matters at the university." The committee will also look at "financial data, both internal and comparative, aimed at providing insight as to the overall resource use of administrative areas in comparison with other university functions." The charter further states that the committee intends to review "administrative practices, with an eye toward making recommendations concerning efficiencies, economies and synergies, best practices and needs for adequate staffing."

University President Jehuda Reinharz had announced the creation of the committee at a Sept. 3 faculty meeting. The committee intends to present initial findings to the president by Jan. 31.

"We wanted to get a balance between people who were high enough up in the organization that they could implement change, [and] I thought it was good to have a roll-your-sleeves-up kind of mentality, so I wanted to make sure we had people, who, unlike me, weren't too executive in their orientation,"Apfel said.

In initial discussions about the committee, "I got a lot of different interpretations as to what people thought [a staffing committee] was supposed to be," Apfel said. "As I put the charge together, I tried to reflect the various threads that were out there in terms of the kinds of things that the staffing committee should be paying attention to."

He said that other institutions conducting similar studies, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "aren't going out to prove that there's too few or too many people in the physical plant, . but really, it's taking a broader view of it to say, 'Are there organizational efficiencies that we can generate? . Are there areas where we can consolidate functions, that are separately structured and find ways to combine them?'"

"I think that that [the review of administrative practices] is the one that we're going to be teasing out as the primary one over time," Apfel said.

"Last year we tended to emphasize across-the-board cuts, and people sort of felt like we're at the point where we're having a hard time delivering some of the services we want to deliver," Apfel said.

"If we're going to be looking at additional savings, I really don't want to be doing it in an across-the-board kind of way. I think we have an obligation, if we are going to look harder at these things, to look at them in a strategic sense so that we understand [if there is] a way to do things better rather than do we a have to do things less well," Apfel said.

He said that he expected the committee would find the University thinly staffed in terms of the number of employees available to do work, particularly after last year's budget cuts. He added, however, that some faculty had expressed concern about the size of the administration.

Emphasizing that no final conclusion had been reached regarding staffing or the size of the administration, Apfel stated that "my suspicion is that we're not going to find that we have too many staff in lots of different areas or too many managers, . which is one of the reasons why [the focus is on] how do you think about restructuring, reorganizing, handling things more economically and efficiently." One of the conclusions the UNC study reached was that "there were too many managers compared to the [number of] people they were supervising," Apfel pointed out.

Apfel said the committee was still figuring out how exactly it was going to go about its work. The initial discussions were about establishing a "common framework for everybody to work from."

He said that he did not think the committee would finish all its work by its Jan. 31 deadline. "We have budget issues, so if by January if we can collect any good information for the budget we'll do it, but some of these things they take a couple of years to work through, so I think we'll deliver a report in that time frame, and it'll be useful for the president, but I don't think that's going to end it."

According to summaries of the Nov. 5 and Nov. 10 meetings posted on the ARRC's website, the committee members have been reviewing organizational charts and trend information as its first step, which they plan to post online once the documents have been updated.

Also according to the summary of the second meeting, the committee "turned its attention to possible areas of inquiry. Specifically, what areas of university operations might benefit from a dialogue over best practices, process improvements or structural change."

The summary states that "several ideas emerged for further discussion, including graduate student services, international student services, information technology, admissions (across the university), global issues, purchasing and budget tracking" with a note that the list is in no particular order and not purporting to be comprehensive.

"Because last year the academic side of things underwent the whole [Curriculum on Academic Restructuring and Steering committee] review, the faculty are interested to make sure that the administrative side of the university is similarly looked at in detail," Mead said.

"I think the [ARRC] is very much in the early stages. . [We're] just looking at the overall organization of the administrative side of the University and deciding what information we need to gather in order to assess whether there are areas in which there could be savings," she said.

"I think once we've begun to make an assessment, I can be the conduit at faculty meetings for passing on the information that we're gathering," she said.

She added that she felt that her biggest role on the committee is asking questions and clarifying terms. "There may be things people on the administrative side are so used to talking about that they don't realize that they're not terms that the faculty are entirely cognizant of," Mead said.

Apfel said that the committee would communicate with the community through its Web site and encourage staff members to give feedback on their individual departments. "We'll also be asking people to come to our meetings . to talk about their area and try to understand how they're organized," he said.