Thursday, March 17, 2016

From Melody's Desk

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

Are you the first person in your family to attend college? I am the first person in my family with a four year degree. Did you see the story on current UVA students and faculty who are first generation in yesterday’s UVAToday Daily Report? There is a page on the Provost’s web site where self-identified first-generation college graduates are listed. If you wish to self-identify as a first-generation college graduate, there is a link on the site to email the Provost’s webmaster.

Spring means that we are coming up on the awards portion of the calendar.  And in that vein, I encourage you to submit recommendations to the Leonard W. Sandridge Outstanding Contribution Award, the University’s highest honor for staff. Each recipient is publicly recognized and receives an engraved gift as well as a $1,000 cash award. Nomination forms are due by 5pm, Friday, March 25, 2016 and should be submitted either via email to AskHR@virginia.edu or as hard copy to the Office of University Human Resources, PO Box 400127, 914 Emmet Street, Michie South.

Were you there on Wednesday when we revealed UVAFinance’s mission, vision, and core values?  I hope that you were very clearly able to see your imprint on this work. We had a great conversation and even made a few more minor edits thanks to valuable feedback from the team.  I appreciated all the frank feedback and would love to continue to hear from you.  A big thanks to Pat Hogan for joining us and sharing his viewpoint on our aspirations!  You can see the full presentation here, but I’ve also copied the most important parts below:

Mission:  UVAFinance provides the financial framework to accurately, effectively, and transparently steward University resources in a complex educational and healthcare environment. We are the source of financial expertise, information, solutions, and insight that informs internal and external stakeholders and enables University students, educators, researchers, and administrators to be their best.

Vision:  UVAFinance is the valued and trusted financial partner that the University community turns to first.

Core Values
   Impeccable source of information
   Service excellence
   Innovative action
   Collaborative partner
   Valued, high-performing teams

We learned that we have a lot of work ahead of us, now that we know which way our compass is pointing.  Each of us, as an individual, a team member, and as a leader, will need to commit to following these core values in all our work.  We have also identified a number of projects and committees underway or starting where you can participate.  New committees include:
We will also look to connect this work to our 2016 goals and competencies.  For more help on writing your 2016 goals, signup now for SMART Goal workshops.

A HUGE thank you for all who were involved throughout the process and to those who were able to help celebrate at the Strategy meeting on Wednesday.  I’m so excited at meeting this milestone and can’t wait to see where we go with this!!


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