AACII Meeting Minutes
Thursday October 8, 2015
Note Taker: Amberly Steward
Attendees: Richard Brewer (Chair), Lisa St Croix (Vice Chair), Shrene Aram, Steve Lanou, Tara Henrichon, Robin Lemp, Robin Elices, Sue Shansky, Pia Handsom Chris Durham, Peter Brenton, Amberly Steward, Sucharita Ghosh, Doreeen Morris, Kim Mann, Su Chung, Lynn Hinds, Christine Malnati, Lisa Thoma
- General introduction by Richard Brewer with notification that Lisa St Croix has agreed to serve as Vice Chair of AACII. Shrene Aram has stepped down as Vice Chair of AACII upon accepting a new role at MIT.
- Overview of AACII from Richard
Richard launched the meeting by going over the new AACII website, which has been converted to the Drupal Cloud. We can now update the website ourselves with relative ease. There is no annual cost for updates. The goal is to make the website more dynamic (addition of meeting minutes). There is information on how to join AO and AO-FO mailing lists. The overview of roles and responsibilities of AACII members is present.
Reminder: Poster Session is Friday 10/16. Early lunch from 11:30-12:30 – invitation extended to AACII members.
Richard mentioned that his conversations with Sherene regarding her new position at MIT sparked a fertile conversation about challenges and opportunities in our roles. All members went around the table to introduce themselves and speak a bit about the challenges and opportunities they face in their own roles.
Richard Brewer – D-Lab. The Task Force on the Future of Education desires to enhance hands-on learning opportunities, which DLab is at the forefront of. Travel and Procurement can be complex in his department. He is interested in forming a team of international program administrators to have a council (similar to AACII).
Sherene Aram – MTL. Microsystems Technology Laboratories does a lot of research on the semi-conductor. In the next 18-24 months, the new Nano building (12) will be built. Fabrication equipment, which MTL does now, will eventually transition to Nano and MTL will no longer fabricate. Export laws and non- disclosure agreements are big challenges when it comes to international collaborations.
Steve Lanou – Office of Sustainability. His office has a small group of 6 people. They are not heavy users of administrative systems at MIT. They do use budgeting, travel, and procurement systems, as well as Atlas (mostly by Admin Assistants). Their core challenge is with respect to the culture of and tools for utilizing data for business intelligence. How can we better utilize data so we can understand our current conditions and what’s possible for the future?
Tara Henrichon – Sloan. Being at Sloan presents unique challenges because they have MIT systems as well as Sloan systems. She would like to see support staff have a more enriched environment with more potential for promotion within. She is interested in learning about the worklife balance and structure of other working environments at MIT.
Robin Lemp – Office of the Executive Vice President and Treasurer and MIT Skoltech Initiative. His concerns surround short-term housing possibilities for international visitors – he’d like a brainstorming session on that topic. Additionally, he has concerns about cultural training and would like to know more about the Travel Registry.
Robin Elices - Office of the Executive Vice President and Treasurer. Her current challenge is about how to better communicate the rollout of new efforts to faculty/staff/student communities. Presently looking into social media an option to better that.
Sue Shansky – Office of the Vice President for Resource Development. The Capital Campaign is her current large project ending in 2020. Her main challenge is the recruitment and retention of qualified fundraising & IT staff.
Pia Handsom – Dept of Brain & Cognitive Sciences. She sees DLCs struggling to solve the same problems, but a lack of collaboration and communication to fix them. Her department has limited space, which is always a challenge for new research initiatives. There is a need for fundraising but it is hard to find good talent in that realm.
Chris Durham – HR Payroll Manager. Announced that the VPF website will be relaunched early next year. Additionally, the Salary Distribution dashboard is upcoming.
Peter Brenton – Dept of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Would like to see MIT’s massively diverse systems communicate with each other to make our processes more streamlined.
Amberly Steward – Anthropology. Her department struggles with a small faculty and small staff while receiving an increased demand for visitors, many of which are international. There is limited space for such visitors. Her department sees the need for cultural training at MIT and wants to be more involved.
Sucharita Ghosh - Dept of Mechanical Engineering. She shares the previously stated challenges. Two more units were lumped into MechE recently. Space is a continual issue. Matching resources to people and space is something that needs to be addressed consistently.
Doreen Morris - Office of the Provost. Shares our pain.
Kim Mann – Office of Sponsored Programs. Talked about the transition to Kuali Coeus and the challenges end users are having, which are shared by OSP. KC and MIT are working side by side to implement fixes for us. They are currently conducting testing for a new release.
Su Chung - Admin Services Organization. She also feels the talent retention is an issue. Finds that liaising between two departments poses unique challenges.
Lynn Hinds – Office of the Provost. Experiences funding challenges due to reductions of federal support, which results in increased proposal submission and requests for underrecovery. This means there is an increase in workload for everyone (PI’s, Staff, etc). She also uses manual shadow systems frequently.
Christine Malnati – MITEI. It is challenging to bring financial supporters and faculty together for research. Many times, companies are new to sponsoring research. There are issues of Intellectual Property. She’d like to see revenue reports.
Lisa Thoma - Center for Real Estate. Being in a small center is a challenge – they are always caught in the middle of working for an entrepreneurial place that has so many systems and policies. Student recruitment is something they are working on. Their faculty and lecturers are appointment through DUSP – she would prefer the appointment process to be more flexible so that topic-driven seminars can be offered.
Lisa St. Croix – Dept of Facilities. Her office struggles with supporting users on rolled out projects while continuing work on subsequent project - her group needs more resources to be able to do that. Since she is in such a large group, consensus on how a project will work takes time. Data integrity is also a challenge.
Richard summarized by saying we seem to all be having three broad areas of focus in terms of the challenges we face:
- Systems: HR talent acquisition and retention, nimbleness as workforce is changing, international programs
- Revenue: funding challenges, industry relationships
- Cross-cultural partnerships: best practices, ideas on how to do things
3. Recommendation of Topics Affecting AOs:
Capital Campaign
Mental Health @ MIT
Travel Registry – possible pilot during IAP – Su Chung would like to see not just MIT
business travel, but also personal travel
HR position classifications
Campus safety & security – SEMO visit – Tom Holmes? John DiFava?
IS&T “re-re-org”
Facilities Modernization
Buy Pay Process
Commuting and Parking
Discussion of AO Networking Event Focus will be discussed at subsequent meetings
