Over the course of the past several months, CALS Business Operations (CBO) staff engaged a Roles and Responsibilities Work Group, comprised of three departmental business partners and two faculty, to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) around many primary business functions with the intention to document and clarify roles and responsibilities of existing business processes.

In addition to CBO staff, members of the work group included: Luz Davila (CIPM), Owen Duckworth (CSS), Adam Fahrenholz (PDPS), Michelle Healey (Hort), and Michele Sabatelli (DEPP). Their commitment to the project and their many hours of review and advice have resulted in a better SOP structure and content. They were strong advocates for clarity of process and use of common language that can be easily understood by faculty and staff.

The SOPs the work group developed represent an important, but preliminary, step in providing faculty and staff throughout our college clarity on CALS business processes and their respective role in them. This launch includes documentation of thirteen (13) business processes within four (4) categories (administration, budget, business services, and contracts and grants), including an SOP to describe the process by which the college, moving forward, will create, maintain, and use these SOPs.

Formal documentation of business processes via SOPs also enables the CBO to resolve outstanding Internal Audit findings from a college wide review completed by the University three years ago. These SOPs have been shared with Internal Audit as part of fulfilling the management response to the initial findings. The SOPs are now available on the CBO website on a Standard Operating Procedures page. Brief videos will also be developed for each of the SOPs to share with the college community by the end of this year to promote greater understanding of business processes. The CBO will continue to develop and publish additional SOPs for other business functions in the months to come.

View CBO Standard Operating Procedures