Category
Finance & Accounting
Submitted By
Joshua Firestone, joshua.firestone@colorado.edu, Division Budget Manager
Project Team
Joshua Firestone, joshua.firestone@colorado.edu, Division Budget Manager
Robert Clark, robert.d.clark@colorado.edu, Director of Budget
Meghan Perea, meghan.perea@colorado.edu, Division Budget Manager
Raul San Agustin, raul.sanagustin@colorado.edu, Division Budget Manager
Amy Lavens, amy.lavens@colorado.edu, Vice Dean of Finance
Project Description
The Divisional Faculty Personnel Summary, or what we affectionately call “The Billboard” presents a simplified view of A&S departments’ faculty hires, retentions, promotions, transfers, resignations, and retirements over the last 5 plus years. The purpose of the summary is to aid the Deans of Division and the department Chairs in making hiring decisions. By presenting the information in a straightforward manner, everyone is able to see the totality of actions taken by the divisions over the years in who has come and gone. With this information readily available and transparently known the Deans are better able to allocate faculty positions. While there are personnel dashboards available from ODA and other sources, they often lag the up-to-the-minute reality that is required in making fair and rational decisions. The Billboard provides data and a summary view in real time.
Project Efficiency
Each year the Deans and Chairs come together to make hiring allocations and decisions. Sometimes the Deans would have to pull together data on the spot to discover where previous allocations had been made. This would cost them valuable time. The Billboard presents all this data in an accessible dashboard format, providing clear and transparent reporting to college and department leadership in a division. The Deans are able to quickly discern how departments have been affected by events such as retirements, resignations, retentions, promotions, and hires. This in turn allows them to make fully informed decisions.
Project Inspiration
As mentioned previously, while there are similar sources of information available, they can lag the current reality by up to eighteen months. We needed a system for the Deans and Chairs to make real time decisions for allocating faculty hires. By tracking the ins and outs of departments, as well as other metrics such as student credit hour growth, the key stakeholders are better able to come to equitable and reasoned outcomes in hiring.
What Makes You Happiest about this Project?
What makes us happiest about the project is all the teamwork and collaboration that went into building it. We had feedback from each of the Deans of Division as well as almost all the various department Chairs and Managers within A&S. It went through several iterations, and it couldn’t have been as clear and clean as it is without all this help. Knowing that we built a useful tool with the input of so many stakeholders brings us joy and pride.