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Hello colleagues,
Thank you to those who attended the Business Affairs all-staff meeting on January 30. It was great being together in person and engaging with everyone throughout the event. Below is a recap organized by topic.
SVP Transition
Before we began, I acknowledged my recent announcement regarding my plan to leave UNLV this fall to transition into consulting and professional development work for the higher education and non-profit industries. My target date for this transition is September 1. I am providing a long notice period to provide time for the university to perform a national search and to support a smooth transition.
I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished together over the past several years, and truly appreciate your hard work and commitment. We have improved our division culture and the service we provide to campus. I’m confident that the foundation we’ve developed will continue to support UNLV’s progress and Top Tier 2.0 mission.
University Diversity Initiatives
We welcomed Chief Diversity Officer Seval Yildirim, Special Assistant to the Vice President Yaa Obeng, and Director of Development Susie Smith. They introduced themselves and provided contact information for anyone who has questions or would like to learn more about UNLV’s diversity initiatives.
Flora Dungan Humanities (FDH): Room 609; 702- 895-5580
Business Affairs DEI Workgroup
Recently, we launched a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion workgroup within Business Affairs. The goal of this group is to evaluate opportunities to make everyone within the division feel seen and heard and that they belong. We’re also exploring ways to embed DEI into our policies and procedures. We plan to work closely with Seval’s office to align our Business Affairs DEI with the university’s DEI initiatives to make sure we’re all moving in the same direction, equitably.
The Business Affairs DEI workgroup members are: Chantel McDonald, Chelsea Meggerson, Duane Kyles, Heather Ortiz, Kim Case-Nichols, Musa Pam, Nichole Staker, Rebecca Paulson, Regina "Reggie" Bailey, Shavonne Gramkow, and Shi-Lynn Campbell.
Search Advocate Program
Michelle Hogan, director of compensation & talent acquisition in Human Resources, presented on the Search Advocate Pilot Program, a two-year initiative that seeks to address UNLV’s need for a more diverse academic and administrative faculty candidate pool to better reflect the faces of those sitting in classrooms across our campuses.
The program trains academic and administrative faculty to be search advocates on hiring committees who guide the recruitment process by implementing rubrics and best practices that erase implicit biases that can influence hiring decisions.
A special thank you to those in Business Affairs who serve as search advocates: Kathy Schreiber, Rebecca Paulson, Regina "Reggie" Bailey, and Sarath Kraus.
Accountability Activity
Campus Ombuds David Schwartz and Program Manager Tifara Rachal led us in an interactive activity focused on accountability, a topic that was identified as a top priority in our Business Affairs cultural assessment survey. In groups at our table we brainstormed:
- A definition of accountability
- How we hold others (employees, supervisors, and peers) accountable
- Personal accountability checklists for ourselves
Volunteers shared their group’s thoughts and feedback. At the end of the session, we all identified three takeaways:
- One thing we learned from someone else
- One thing we realized
- One thing that we will do differently
David and Tifara will summarize the input provided during the session and share back with us.
2022 Business Affairs Customer Service Survey Results
We provided an overview of the results from the 2022 Business Affairs customer service survey:
More than 550 people responded, a slight decrease from 2021 (650 responses).
The average customer service rating for the division decreased slightly from 3.4 in 2021 to 3.33 in 2022 (on a scale of 1 through 4).
- 20 out of 24 areas have means higher than their 2019 baseline scores
- Three areas were not included in the 2019 baseline survey
- One area’s score decreased from 2019 baseline survey
Respondents provided more than 1,000 comments. Speak with your supervisor if you have any questions about your department’s specific results.
Campus Values
As part of our Top Tier 2.0 Strategic Plan, UNLV introduced four sets of core values. These are the principles that drive our decisions and actions.
Once the core values were identified, we established a task force to define and develop behavioral statements to describe what the values look like in action. The task force included diverse members from across campus. The definitions and behavior statements were presented to the President’s Office, Provost Office, Cabinet, Faculty Senate, and Academic Council. Comments and recommendations were included from these groups The final definitions and statements are available on the Top Tier 2.0 webpage.
At the beginning of the year, we announced Rebel Applause, an online platform that employees can use to acknowledge one another for living the campus values. All employee classifications can send notes of recognition to one another through the system. We encourage everyone to use Rebel Applause to thank one another for a job well done. A simple “thank you” goes a long way!
Employee Recognition
We acknowledged all of our 2022 monthly employee appreciation award recipients and announced our 2022 employees of the year:
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Michael Kwiecien, Senior Project Manager, Planning and Construction
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Rose Cummings, Program Officer, Cashiering and Student Accounts
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