What began as a conceptual conversation two years ago about how to improve administrative support services today has six staffed regional teams, academic and administrative leaders, a functioning governance structure, and a focus on success. Although a considerable amount of work has already occurred, the real work begins now as regional service teams and leaders set out to understand the unique service needs and opportunities in their regions.
The objective of forming service regions was to bring administrative service providers and their clients closer together to provide better and more knowledgeable service. Organizing regions along academic disciplines allows staff to learn the unique people, issues, terminology, seasonality, sponsors, and vendors of their particular region.
I am pleased that all six regions now have executive leadership in place that include Regional Directors, who manage day-to-day operations, and Regional Associate Deans, who will liaise with faculty and principal investigators within their regions and represent their regions in campuswide resource and governance discussions.
In addition to regional leadership, each region has now been assigned human resources, research administration, and purchasing and reimbursements team members. The numbers of personnel allocated in each specialty varies depending on the types of work and the volume of transactions in each region.
Plans are being discussed to relocate some regional team members to campus. Location decisions will depend on what is most efficient for each team to provide high-quality service to their clients and finding available space in close proximity. Regional Directors will be on campus daily; meeting with clients to better understand and meet their service needs.
Each region now has its own website that serves as the primary service site for faculty, staff, and student employees in that region. Web sites will be basic at first but, over the course of the coming year, will be built out with more functionality and features. The goal is to make your regional website your primary hub to access administrative support services, to answer your questions, and get things done.
The regions and their respective leaders are:
ERSO
ERSO serves the College of Engineering, the College of Environmental Design, the School of Information, and related ORUs and field stations. The ERSO region has been in operation for the last decade and served as the model for the regional service concept. ERSO is under the management of Executive Director Cynthia Weekley and Associate Dean for Research Karl Van Bibber.
ChaMPS
The ChaMPS region, short for “Chemistry and MPS” serves the College of Chemistry, the Division of Mathematical & Physical Sciences, and related ORUs and field stations. Samantha Yee joined UC Berkeley from UCSF last year to become the Regional Director of the ChaMPS region. Professor Ron Cohen is the Regional Associate Dean of ChaMPS, as well as an early and tireless advocate for the design and launch of the regional model.
BEST
BEST stands for “Biological & Environmental Science and Technology” and serves the College of Natural Resources, the Division of Biological Sciences, and related ORUs, museums, and field stations. Adam Berke serves as Regional Director of the BEST region and Professor Rebecca Heald serves as Regional Associate Dean.
SHARE
SHARE stands for “Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Undergraduate Studies, Organized Research units Region” and serves the Division of Social Sciences, the Division of Arts & Humanities, the Undergraduate Division, and related ORUs. Teal Sexton is the Regional Director of SHARE together with Professor Max Auffhammer serving as Regional Associate Dean.
ProS
ProS stands for “Professional Schools” and serves Berkeley Law, Haas School of Business, the School of Optometry, Goldman School of Public Policy, School of Education, School of Journalism, School of Public Health, School of Social Welfare, and UC Berkeley Extension. Julia Arno has recently joined UC Berkeley as the Regional Director of the ProS region and Dean John Flanagan of the School of Optometry is serving as Interim Regional Dean while a governance structure for the ProS region is finalized.
BEARS
BEARS (“Berkeley Educators and Administrators Regional Services”) serves all administrative units and other units not served by the other five regions. Lori Tannyhill is the Regional Director of BEARS and Marc Fisher will serve as the Regional Vice Chancellor. Serving primarily administrative units will allow the BEARS region to understand the unique challenges these units face.
Introducing Berkeley Shared Services
Now that we have evolved shared services to have a regional focus, the name Campus Shared Services is no longer apposite. Going forward, providing administrative support services through the regional structure will be known as Berkeley Regional Services. This new name applies to the six service regions, their collective governance structure, as well as certain services which will not transition to the regions (more on that below). In the coming months, the current CSS website will be decommissioned and visitors will be re-routed to the new Berkeley Regional Services site.
Retiring the names “Campus Shared Services” and “CSS” sounds simple, but in reality, those names appear on countless web sites, forms, templates, business cards, spreadsheets, maps, signage, decals, and a variety of other applications. As a fiscally responsible measure, I have asked my staff to only replace these instances in the normal course of business. As a practical matter, this means you will continue to see the name “Campus Shared Services” or “CSS” in the coming months; over time, however, these instances will be replaced with “Berkeley Regional Services.”
During this transition, a decision was made to not transition certain services to the regions. These include new employee onboarding, visas, benefits and leaves, and records management. These services will be provided to all regions through a central Berkeley Regional Services team. CSS-IT support services is another service that will not migrate to the regions. CSS IT has been renamed IT Client Services and is now reporting to the Office of the CIO. IT Client Services will continue to be under the direction of Jerry Yerardi and offer the services that keep us connected and productive.
We have designed a robust governance structure for resolving regional service issues and deciding resource allocations. My colleagues, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Alivisatos and Vice Chancellor for Research Randy Katz serve together with me as Executive Sponsors for Regional Service. The Regional Associate Deans and Regional Directors all have regular, standing meetings to elevate and resolve systemic service issues and to advocate for campus wide opportunities and solutions.
We will continue to survey and monitor customer satisfaction with services to measure the impact of these changes. At the beginning of this project, we conducted an extensive faculty survey to measure satisfaction with administrative support services. We will continue to administer that survey biannually to measure the impact of these changes we hope will improve our ability to serve you.
During the last year, we pulled together some existing project and process analysts into a new Business Process Management Office. This office is charged with many of the efforts that will be implemented in the coming months and years to improve service. You may want to visit the BPMO website and view dashboards for all of their current improvement projects.
One of the project objectives for was for the service regions to be operational before the launch of UCPath. UCPath is the UC-systemwide system that will deliver a single payroll and human resources system to all UC locations statewide. Several locations have already joined UCPath, including UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Merced, and UCOP. With our six service regions now up and operational, Berkeley is better prepared to transition to UCPath on March 1.
This is an exciting time to be at Berkeley. I am confident that the transition to regional services will, over time, lead to more personal and improved administrative support services to help you succeed in your academic and professional pursuits.
As always, I welcome your input and feedback.
Marc Fisher
Vice Chancellor, Administration
February, 2019