As mentioned in the tagline of this forum, the purpose is to facilitate a dialog around the Strategic Resource Investment initiative (SRI).  This forum is a place members of the University of Memphis community can ask questions and express concerns or comments as we go through the development of our model for SRI.  The webpages for the initiative (www.memphis.edu/sri) will continue to be updated with more detailed information and the current status of the initiative.  Any suggestions for improvements, corrections, or clarifications to this website are also greatly appreciated.

There have been several questions that have come from discussions with Deans and Department Chairs and we will start the dialog by addressing several of those over the next few posts.  In this post, I want to focus on a few common points about the philosophy of our SRI initiative.   The underlying goal is to develop a more transparent procedure for the allocations of the resources of the University – the people, facilities, and finances.  It is much more than a simple budget allocation process.  Much of the detail that will be discussed is on the allocation of revenues and costs but the true goal is to setup the conversations on the priorities and the allocation of resources to follow those priorities.

Within an SRI model, the financial responsibility and accountability, as well as resulting resources, are managed at the college level.  This is aligning the responsibility at the level of the people who have the best knowledge about our programs.  The recent plan eliminating the “central pool” for graduate student tuition is one example.  Going forward there will no longer be a central administration controlled pool of funds that are drawn from each year as those funds are now budgeted as part of the college budgets under their control.  There is no longer a blank check provided to departments for tuition as they award stipends to individual students.   This does mean colleges will have to be responsible for knowing and planning the complete cost of each student.  On the flip side, colleges will also have the ability to tailor the use of these funds in ways best suited for the graduate program within that college.

The above is just one example of how responsibilities are shifted out of the central administration to the college level along with direct benefits leading to revenue increases.    I hope you will all read the “Guiding Principles” and “What the Model Will/Will Not Do” sections of the SRI webpage.  We look forward to your feedback and further discussions as this new model is developed.