To all faculty, staff and students,

The Support Service Transformation Task Force wishes to thank all those that took the time to post comments and questions to the blog on the draft criteria. All feedback received was reviewed by the task force and some changes were made to the final criteria and their descriptors. 

The Support Service Transformation Task Force has now posted the final criteria and weightings that will be used to prioritize all support services at the University of Saskatchewan. You will find these at transformus.usask.ca.

Thank you again for your feedback. We will continue to provide updates at transformus.usask.ca throughout this process.

Kevin Schneider and Bob Tyler

Support Service Transformation Task Force co-chairs

To all faculty, staff and students,

Based on feedback provided by the campus community and discussions that have taken place within the Academic Program Transformation Task Force, our task force has finalized the list of criteria and the weightings that will be used to prioritize all academic programs at the University of Saskatchewan. These criteria and a full update from our task force can be found online at transformus.usask.ca.

We want to express our sincere appreciation to all those who took the time to provide their feedback. This feedback was valued and will continue to inform the process as we work on the template to be used to collect data from colleges and schools.

We encourage you to continue to visit transformus.usask.ca weekly to receive updates on our progress throughout this process.

Beth Bilson and Lisa Kalynchuk
Academic Program Transformation Task Force Co-chairs

Colleagues,

Our board of governors has approved the university’s 2013-14 operating budget, which contains a projected deficit of $3.3 million. While this deficit, at less than one per cent of projected expenses for the year, demonstrates progress against our financial challenges, we still need to ensure that expenses will not outpace revenues going forward.

For 2013-14, we project operating budget revenue of just under $468 million, reflecting increases from the prior year primarily in provincial funding and tuition revenue, both announced in March. Operating budget revenue represents about half of total university revenue; the remainder is restricted for specific purposes, such as research and capital, and cannot be used for operations.

On May 10, 2013, Ken Steele, creator and editor of Canada's leading post-secondary news daily, Academica's Top Ten, will be at the University of Saskatchewan to deliver a presentation titled "The Future-Ready Campus." In this thought-provoking look ahead to the campus of 2025, Ken Steele will place a special focus on funding trends both nationally and internationally and discuss how he thinks these funding trends may affect the campus of the future. At the conclusion of his presentation there will be time set aside for a question and answer session. We encourage you to attend.

Ken Steele's The Future-Ready Campus: Planning with 2025 in Mind
Friday, May 10, 2013
Neatby-Timlin Theatre (Arts 241)
Presentation: 9:00 – 10:30 am
Break and refreshments: 10:30 – 10:45 am
Question and answer session: 10:45 am – 12:00 pm

We find Ken Steele's presentation timely with recent questions posed regarding provincial funding for the University of Saskatchewan. While we have spoken a lot about our situation over the past year, we imagine you may wonder if we are unique in our financial challenges.

Efforts to develop a more automated process for the university’s travel and expense management needs have been underway for some time. As reported in On Campus News earlier this year, the University of Saskatchewan has selected UNIGLOBE as its preferred travel provider, following a request for proposal process last spring and board approval this past December. As well, we are in the early stages of implementing an online travel and expense tool with Concur Technologies Inc. aligned with UNIGLOBE’s travel management services.

With these arrangements, the university is on its way to a seamless online process for travel bookings and expense claims. The current manual, paper-heavy process was identified by the campus community as an opportunity for improvement during the Service and Process Enhancement Project (SPEP); the travel and expense management project is moving forward as part of the “Maximizing the Value of University Spend” area of Operating Budget Adjustments.