Feb. 21, 2019: Administrative Services

Area Report for Board of Trustees

February has unexpectedly turned out to be an interesting month in terms of inclement weather. We have had snow and lots of snow in the past couple of weeks. Campus operations were suspended for multiple days. My sincere appreciation to the Facilities and Public Safety staff, especially Director Barry Holldorf and Director David Menke, for their excellent work in clearing the snow and securing the campus.

The snow closures will have an impact on the financial operations of the Bookstores and Conference Services. Several major events were canceled due to the snowstorm.
We are pleased to have Garvaundo Hamilton joining the Student Housing Management Team, as interim evening/on-call manager for the Campus View. In his full-time position, Garvaundo is the new International Engagement Advisor for CLS and International Student Programs.

Clearing snow and de-icing walkways on an 80-acre campus are monumental tasks for Facilities staff during a snowstorm. We urge all employees and students to stay away from the campus during snow closures for safety reasons.

We are getting ready for our annual budget planning process. Executive Staff is currently formulating the budget planning principles with input from the divisions.
Leslie Fountain Williams, Director of Budget and Grants, has resigned from her position to pursue another opportunity at Washington State University. We are in the process of recruiting for this critical position.
Due to inclement weather among other contributing factors, the State Financial Audit will be extended to the end of March.
Cathy Cartwright attended the national NACUBO conference, in late January, to learn about upcoming changes to GASB standards (Governmental Accounting Standards Board).
We are in the process of transitioning our student tuition payment plan to NelNet. We are expecting to have the new system implemented for summer quarter 2019.

With inclement weathers, we have had multiple opportunities to deploy our emergency responses and HCAlerts system. We are confident to report that our emergency notification procedure and system had performed as expected.

Report submitted by Vice President Michael Pham.