Dear Strategic Resources and Support team,
With a new semester upon us, I’d like to provide a mid-year update of where we are with some of the main SRS priorities I articulated at the beginning of the academic year. So much of what our SRS teams do isn’t always readily visible. Yet the work you’ve done the past few months has improved the university experience in numerous ways for our students, faculty and staff.
Care and support for our employees
- Our Finance and Business Strategy (FBS) and Human Resources (HR) teams worked together to enhance compensation in multiple ways, including a $1,300 one-time retention payment in October to all regular employees and implementation of a 3% merit pool for university staff that followed a 3% increase for classified staff last summer.
- The Integrity Safety and Compliance team, in conjunction with a number of other units on campus, finalized an updated parental leave policy to broaden eligibility and enacted a new Lactation Space Policy.
- Our Health and Wellness Services team launched AcademicLiveCare for our staff and faculty as a supplement to the great care our Faculty and Staff Assistance Program already provides and in addition to your health plans.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- Each of our SRS unit leaders worked with our campus DEI consultants to create goals and action plans for their departments, and will now be moving into the implementation phase.
- Our Emergency Management (EM) team completed work to make campus emergency and closure alerts available in Spanish, Chinese and Hindi to help ensure our native speakers of these languages can access this crucial information quickly in real time. EM also worked closely with Strategic Relations and Communications (SRC) to enhance our notification practices for off-campus events and emergencies.
Operational excellence
- Our Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance published results of our student Sexual Misconduct Survey, a key set of metrics that will inform the team as it continues to implement strategies that improve the climate on our campus and in our community.
- We hired a new chief people officer and new chief financial officer who are already making strides to set us up for long-term success as a campus.
- With interim leadership in place, our Enrollment Management team is poised to embark on a Strategic Enrollment Management Planning process this spring.
- Our Infrastructure and Sustainability team began design of new housing for the area north of Boulder Creek to ensure more of our non-freshman students have access to housing on campus.
- The FBS team has implementation of our new Budget Model well under way.
- Our Office of Information Technology (OIT) is implementing three major projects – Google Storage, Microsoft Teams phones and secure computer standards – that are critical to improving our system integration on campus and optimizing and protecting our resources.
- Transportation Services placed CU Boulder’s first two electric Buff Buses into service in support of our campus sustainability goals.
- Our SRC and I&S teams collaborated with partners across the university to place CU Boulder at the center of the climate change/human rights discussion in early December with the production of the Right Here Right Now Global Climate Summit.
These are just a few examples of the vital work you all do every day, and I’m so proud that all of you are on our team. I hope that each of you enjoyed some downtime with loved ones over the winter break, and I’m excited for the great work ahead this semester as we build toward the climax of commencement in May – just 16 short weeks away.
A few other notes around SRS:
- Pulse surveys: We want to hear how you’re doing on a variety of topics as we strive to enhance employee engagement and belonging. Take the first of our short monthly pulse surveys.
- Employee town hall: Please join us virtually from noon to 1 p.m. today as Provost Russell Moore and I provide updates on a variety of topics and answer your questions.
- Social Justice Summit: I encourage everyone to register for and attend at least one virtual event of the systemwide CU Social Justice Summit on Jan. 31.
- SRS Burrito Day: I’ve declared Monday, Feb. 13 Breakfast Burrito Day in SRS in appreciation of your contributions. Stay tuned for more information from your units about where and when you can gather with your colleagues to enjoy breakfast on us.
- Benefits and Wellness Fair: Mark your calendar for the Employee Benefits and Wellness Fair on Feb. 22 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. where you can participate in hands-on wellness activities, win prizes and learn about benefits, discounts and ways to connect with programs and services related to childcare, housing and more.
Finally, I want to give a particular heartfelt thanks to our employees in multiple units who went out of their way over the holiday break to deal with broken pipes and flooding in several of our buildings. Your dedication is truly appreciated.
With gratitude,
Pat