To: All Faculty & All Academic Professionals & All Civil Service Staff
           <everybody@illinois.edu> 
    From: "Chancellor Nancy Cantor" <chancellor@uiuc.edu>

Reply-To: chancellor@uiuc.edu
 Subject: MASSMAIL - Creating shared business and support centers

Dear Colleagues,

As you know there are many discussions going on in the State about budget 
cuts to higher education. We must squarely confront the challenge of how 
to absorb any cuts in a way that respects the principles the Provost and I 
stressed in taking last year's cuts and recently outlined in our message 
to you of February 26, 2003.  The people of Illinois have built Urbana-
Champaign over many generations to be an institution of the first class, 
and we will keep it so.  In letters to the deans and vice chancellors last 
fall, the Provost and I asked that planning begin for how to absorb 
reductions in ways that continue our core missions.  Our strategy is being 
formed out of those discussions.

Every economy we can create in the performance of administrative functions 
means fewer cuts will have to be made to the core activities that define 
what we are:  a place where superb education prepares students for success 
in the workplace, as citizens, and as members of a diverse society with 
increasingly global dimensions; where students learn from exceptionally 
talented faculty who are creating the knowledge they teach in their 
classrooms, laboratories, and independent studies; a place where the 
matchless expertise of our faculty, staff and students is applied to 
critical societal issues; and, an institution that continually refashions 
itself to meet new needs, embrace new opportunities, and provide 
leadership.

Our approach to reducing administrative expenses will consist of creating 
clusters of units to share resources within, across, and between colleges, 
departments, centers, and campus-level administrative offices and units.  
We will want to explore opportunities to share where overlapping and 
similar missions, histories of close interaction, and geographical 
proximity will permit the consolidation of business and support 
functions.  The scale of these shared business and service centers will be 
small enough to permit functions to be carried out by people who are 
knowledgeable about unit practices, and close enough to faculty, staff and 
students to be responsive to their needs and deliver effective service.  

Just such an approach has been implemented with units in several colleges 
and administrative units, leading to maintenance of effective and 
responsive services with substantial cost savings.  We must now examine 
the possibilities of using this approach more widely to achieve 
efficiencies and resultant cost savings.

I am asking unit heads to begin immediately the task of identifying 
potential clusters of units where shared business and support services can 
reduce administrative costs while maintaining responsiveness to local 
needs.  In doing so, unit heads will discuss possibilities with heads of 
other units within and across lines of colleges, schools, and campus 
administrative units.

I will appoint a coordinating advisory committee to facilitate discussions 
across the boundaries of our colleges and administrative portfolios.  I am 
asking Provost Richard Herman to chair this committee.  Steven Miller, an 
Illinois alumnus, prominent business leader and member of the Board of the 
University of Illinois Foundation, will serve as external advisor with 
knowledge of organizational models in business and the academy.  Members 
of the committee will include leaders of administrative and service units, 
executive officers of colleges and departments, professionals who work in 
business and support services at all levels, supervisors, students, and 
faculty members.  The composition of this committee will be announced as 
soon as it is formed.  I am requesting that the coordinating advisory 
committee provide its advice to me by April 7, 2003, so that the 
committee's contribution can be fully integrated into our plans for the 
FY04 budget.  A major task of this committee will be to assure that shared 
business and support service centers are implemented in ways that are 
equitable to all units and serve the overriding interests of the campus as 
a whole.

Creation of shared business and service centers will not, by itself, 
achieve sufficient savings to absorb the full reductions we will take in 
FY04.  But this step will help to absorb much of those reductions by 
streamlining administrative services, which must be a cornerstone of any 
strategy to preserve the excellence of our university with diminished 
resources.

Cordially,

Nancy Cantor
Chancellor

This mailing approved by:
The Office of the Chancellor

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