| May 7, 1999 Contacts: Jan Percival 619-452-8958, Winifred Cox 619-534-0363
Editor’s Note:
UCSD MANAGEMENT TEAM EARNS USA TODAY QUALITY CUP AWARD
With 19,200 students and 18,400 employees -- not to mention housing, food
service, security and the like -- it’s like managing a small city.
The Quality Cup honors UCSD for running a tight ship.
 The University of California, San Diego management team today
won the Rochester Institute of Technology/USA TODAY Quality Cup award for its innovative
approach to cutting costs, solving problems and increasing efficiency. The sole winner in
the education category, UCSD is one of six organizations nationwide to receive this award,
which was presented at USA TODAY headquarters in Arlington, Va.
The Quality Cup award recognizes UCSD senior management’s success in streamlining
business practices to decrease costs and to increase productivity, customer satisfaction,
and employee accountability and morale. All of this was achieved despite shrinking budgets
and increased demand for services.
“Since 1994, when we integrated what’s called a Balanced Scorecard approach
to management, UCSD has realized more than $6 million in savings and cost avoidance,”
said Business Affairs Vice Chancellor Steven W. Relyea, who heads the management team
honored with the award. “But it’s not just about money. We’ve developed
training programs that give employees the tools they need to improve our systems,
we’ve re-engineered our business practices to become more productive, and we’ve
used benchmarking measures and customer surveys to measure our progress year after
year.”
“The Business Affairs Division had one of the most impressive management and
measurement systems that I’ve observed in higher education in my 18 years in higher
education and in my seven years working with the Quality Cup awards program,” said
William A. Nowlin, Dean of the College of Business and Public Administration at Governor
State University in University Park, Ill and a Quality Cup judge. “The division is a
customer service oriented operation that constantly and continuously balances the needs of
the state and the university to be fiscally and financially prudent while at the same time
strives to the maximum to satisfy needs and expectations of its customers.”
“Our mantra is to turn boundaries into frontiers,” said UCSD’s Relyea.
“We’re a young university with opportunities to challenge and improve on
traditional ‘institutional’ management. We don’t want to run this place
like a traditional business, we want to take a better business approach.”
Lead by Relyea, the Business Affairs Senior Management team includes Larry Barrett,
housing and dining services; Maudie Bobbitt, police; Rogers Davis, human resources; Elazar
Harel, administrative computing and telecommunications; Jack Hug, auxiliary and plant
services; Donald Larson, controller and business and financial services, and Martha
McDougall, environmental health and safety.
The team’s scope spans UCSD’s nearly 40,000 students and staff and 10 million
square feet of building space on 1,200 acres. UCSD has an annual budget of $1.2 billion
and a monthly payroll of $53 million. In addition to its $1.9 billion economic impact, the
university is widely acknowledged as a research powerhouse. Founded in 1960, nationwide it
ranks third in its annual expenditures for research and development.
“UCSD’s academic excellence is the top priority at this institution,”
Relyea said. “Every single activity conducted by the Business Affairs team must
support that. Adapting the Balanced Scorecard model to the complexities of UCSD has been
our tool for maintaining that priority and sustaining UCSD’s focus on quality.”
Developed in 1993 by Harvard Business School professor Robert Kaplan and Renaissance
Solutions Inc. President David Norton, the Balanced Scorecard defines business success as
balancing four factors: employee motivation and morale, effective processes, customer
satisfaction and financial management. At UCSD, this approach creates a culture that
encourages risk taking, initiative, accountability, outcomes, collaboration and service.
“Kaplan and Norton realized successful organizations can’t focus solely on
finances, profit/loss statements or quarterly earnings,” Relyea said. “The
Balanced Scorecard says that each perspective must be given adequate attention on a
regular basis. That’s what we’ve done for the past six years, and that’s
what we’ll continue to do. The Balanced Scorecard is built into the business
processes and culture of UCSD. It isn’t a project that’ll be over next year,
it’s part of the job.” |
