Deputy Chief Financial Officer Katrina Spencer was on campus for a recent meeting to welcome new Budget and Finance staff when someone asked her if there was a restroom nearby.
She responded to the inquiry with a humorous, “Probably?”
In fact, Spencer had not been on campus much since she interviewed for her job back in February 2020, before COVID-19 emerged, and is just now becoming familiar with her office more than a year after her official start date in June 2020.
“It’s definitely been surreal and I would not recommend making this kind of change during a pandemic,” she said of her decision to make a cross-country move with her husband and three kids amid campus closures and stay-at-home orders to take on a new job.
“All the normal challenges––getting to know your neighbors or finding a good restaurant––were enhanced,” Spencer said. “At work, I was trying to learn about the campus and to get to know my team while at the same time facing unprecedented financial challenges brought on by the pandemic,” Spencer said. “It’s been a wild year.”
Spencer’s “wild year” has not been without success. With campus leadership and stakeholders from across campus, she and her team launched a redesign of the campus budget model in December 2020. Still a work in progress, the new model is scheduled for initial implementation later this year.
Throughout the 2021 fiscal year, Spencer worked with Financial Aid and other campus partners to distribute Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds to students, and with the campus’s resource alignment implementation team to allocate funding to cover pandemic-related costs. In addition, she successfully completed several key hires, including a new campus controller and is getting ready to welcome a new assistant vice chancellor for budget management in August.
For Spencer, the biggest success was just seeing the campus through the last fiscal year.
“There were a lot of tough decisions we had to make as a campus, but I believe we are coming out of the pandemic positioned for success,” she said. “While our campus was definitely impacted by COVID and the downturn in enrollments, our projections over the course of the year have been accurate and our anticipated revenue gap is much smaller than it might have been.”
Spencer credits her colleagues across campus for the overall resilience of CU Boulder’s financial position.
“The level of expertise in the colleges, schools and campus units is pretty incredible,” she said. “We would not be where we are without the care and understanding they apply to their work.”
Looking ahead, Spencer said she is optimistic and grateful.
“I am so proud of my team and the work they have accomplished. That said, I’m really hoping the year ahead is a bit more ‘normal’. I’m looking forward to being on campus and connecting in person with people in the year to come,” she added.