In last week’s Mendoza Exchange, I briefed you about developments on the facilities side of my job as director of finance and facilities. This week, here are a few updates on the finance side:

Annual Budgets: Today is our deadline for submitting the College’s 2020-2021 budget. We are still under “essential” spending guidelines, which means the provost expects significant reductions in our first-quarter non-labor spending compared to the previous year. We are submitting an annual budget that reflects a 2.5% cut in expenses for the next two years and we’ve pulled back on filling vacant staff positions.

This year, we’ve met with many of the College’s budget directors to review 2020-2021 proposed budgets with enough time to make any needed changes in advance of the deadline. We also have met with graduate program associate deans and academic/program directors to review the latest version of Revenue and Expense Reports by program.

The next steps will be to work with the academic/program directors and directors of the functional areas of marketing, admissions, operations, student services, experiential learning and career services in order to set budgets by graduate program. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to implement the organizational changes we are making across the College in the University’s budget systems, so please have patience with us as we work toward budgets by program and by functional area.

Travel Policy: The University recently issued a new travel policy for the fall semester. You can view it on the HERE.nd.edu website. Briefly, the policy states that all University-related travel will be strictly limited to essential travel, regardless of whether the University is paying for it. Permission must be approved in advance by the dean based on the following: 1) an assessment of the need for the requested travel during the semester instead of at some later time; 2) the immediate importance of the requested travel to the University’s core mission of teaching and research; and 3) the potential long-term consequences to the University of not undertaking the requested travel during the semester. All approved travel must be booked through TravelND or Anthony Travel. Before returning to campus, you will be required to contact the Wellness Center to determine whether any measures must be taken to help safeguard our campus community.

All Resource Planning (ARP): ARP helps us to be good stewards of the University’s resources by actively managing our budgets. The tool allows campus users to set and adjust their operating plans throughout the year as warranted, forecast year-end results and develop five-years of strategic plans for all of their funds. We successfully rolled out ARP to a few early adopters in the College in 2019-2020 and now are prepared to expand its use to all budget directors. Our finance team, along with colleagues in the University Budget Office, will be offering training sessions in the coming weeks.

To be sure, it’s a challenging time financially. I greatly appreciate the attitude of many of you as we’ve worked together to reinvent the “new normal.” If you have any finance-related questions, please contact me and finance team — Tracey Plenzler, Angela Byce and Emilia Taylor — Mendoza.Finance@nd.edu.

Today is certainly a momentous occasion as students return to campus. My thanks to Chris Henderson, Dana Pierce and the many others who put in countless hours to get us to this point. Good luck to everyone as we start the new year.

In Notre Dame,

Doug Franson
Director of Finance & Facilities