Many of you have had the opportunity to hear about the organizational changes being put in place at Mendoza during the two recent “staff town halls.” I appreciate the good attendance at each session and encourage staff to attend the follow-up Q&A session tomorrow at 2:30 PM.
Today, I want to highlight several developments I mentioned in my opening remarks.
We started the process of reorganizing College staff three years ago when we introduced the “matrix” structure, which was an effort to better integrate our work functions within the graduate degree programs. This past April, I asked Rob Kelly, Kara Palmer and Ryan Retartha to lead a comprehensive review of the staff structure to identify opportunities for improvement, especially as the College has seen significant growth in a number of important areas.
Their review included a staff survey that consistently identified internal communication, collaboration across teams and functions, and identifying overlaps across functions and programs as key areas of improvement. They further held a series of well-attended workshops and had 35 meetings with individuals.
Also at this time, the extensive feedback I had received as part of the reappointment review process reinforced the need to revisit our organizational structure and for me personally to focus more on strategy and less on operations and administration, prioritizing academic matters and our development efforts. That realization combined with the findings of the extensive organizational review led to the resulting structure, which you can view here.
Most notably, the new structure includes two new senior leadership roles, which report directly to me:
Rob Kelly has accepted the position of Chief Operating Executive responsible for overseeing all staff leaders and operational functions. Additional roles at the senior leadership level, which report directly to Rob, include:
- Senior Director of Student Experience. Kara Palmer will assume this role, with oversight of Student Services, Academic Operations, Experiential Learning and Program Management.
- Senior Director of Graduate Career and Alumni Relations. John Rooney will direct Career Coaching and Development, Employer Relations, Alumni Relations and Advisory Board Relations.
- Senior Director of College Operations. Tracy Biggs has accepted this role, which manages Mendoza IT, Human Resources, Finance, Facilities, Events, Administrative Support and Faculty Support.
- Senior Director of Marketing & Communications. This is an open position that will oversee a combined Marketing and Communications team, including Portfolio Marketing Management, Communications, Marketing Technology, Operations and Analytics, Content Marketing and Paid Media.
- Senior Director of Graduate Enrollment. This also is an open position that will manage Admissions Pipeline, Admissions Operations, Recruiting, Admissions Partnerships and Onboarding.
Ryan Retartha will serve as the Dean’s Advisor and Senior Director of Strategy and Planning. This new role will drive our institutional strategic planning initiatives, oversee a team of Strategy Specialists to support both our faculty and staff leaders, and directly support my most important areas of focus as Dean.
We’ve already begun to implement the new structure and plan to have it in place by early fall semester. Rob will provide more details in an upcoming Mendoza Exchange column.
I believe this organizational structure will lead to better communications and stronger collaborations among our teams and help us in advancing Mendoza to be the College we aspire it to be – a place of learning that can adapt to meet the changing needs of our students and the global business community. I’m grateful for the strong participation of so many of you who took the time to provide feedback and suggestions, as well as to Rob, Kara and Ryan for their leadership in this project.
I also want to share my own excitement and enthusiasm as I embark on my second five-year term as dean. I’m honored that University leadership has trusted me to continue to lead the progress we’ve made, and particularly to implement our strategic plan, and I’m very grateful for your dedication to Mendoza and Our Lady’s University.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn