With the upcoming retirements of Associate Vice President for Auxiliary Services Joe Pietrantoni and Director of Facilities Management Jerry Black this summer, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask has decided to reorganize the Division of Auxiliary Services and create a new position of vice president for campus services.
Auxiliary Services - which currently manages a slew of different functions, from parking to dining - will be divided three ways. Technological functions will be absorbed into the Office of Information Technology, campus-wide functions will be grouped together with Facilities Management Department as Campus Services and a pared-down core of Auxiliary Services will remain.
"I have spent considerable time thinking about ways we could do some organizational realignment, in the hope we could reduce costs and improve services," Trask wrote in a memo last month. "In this new organization, the number of people reporting directly to me will be reduced substantially, and the responsibilities of several of them will be broadened and deepened."
Campus Services, under a new vice president who will likely be hired this spring, will include FMD, as well as housekeeping, parking and transportation and campus security.
Catherine Reeve, director of parking and transportation, said the departments that will fall under Campus Services are those applicable to the entire Duke community - from students to staff to faculty.
She added that she thought parking would continue to be a cost-recovery operation that would support itself financially. "The money we collect from our customers has to go back into the services we're providing," Reeve said. "I think that's how it works at most universities and how it will continue to work here."
The scaled-back Auxiliary Services will be headed by Paul Davies, the current finance director of Auxiliary Services, who will report not to Trask, but to Vice President for Financial Services Michael Mandl. Davies will oversee Duke University Stores, Dining Services, Event Management, postal operations and the transaction processing components of the DukeCard system, and will work more closely with the Division of Student Affairs. Parts of event management will be transferred to Student Affairs.
"If you look at the components, we're the ones that are really integrated," Davies said. "We are really the units that really make Auxiliaries tick, if you will. The components that are here, we all felt were critical to stay together."
Davies said the new version of Auxiliary Services will have a budget of $75 million, less than Auxiliary Services' current $106 million.
Some had speculated that Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta could assume responsibility for Dining Services, one of the most profitable elements of Auxiliary Services. Dining was among Moneta's duties as an associate vice president for campus life at the University of Pennsylvania before coming to Duke.
"Larry is one of just a few people in student affairs who's ever run anything. He's got operating experience," Trask said. "I'm not going to let Larry set the menu, but he'll get to talk to them."
Trask noted that although Dining Services will not follow Event Advising into Student Affairs, Moneta will still take on a collaborative role in dining, as well as stores and the DukeCard system, especially as Moneta gears up to renovate most student social space.
Jim Wulforst, director of Dining Services, said he did not expect dining to change at Duke and that it would continue to be a vendor-based system.
Mandl, who was promoted last year to a full vice president, said he would not be involved in the scaled-back Auxiliary Services' day-to-day operations, but that he would be engaged in its strategic direction.
"At some level, it's impossible to take on that responsibility without a shift in my time," Mandl said. "But the directors of those areas are really strong now."
Finally, oversight of the DukeCard system, along with control of publications and printing, will now fall under Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Tracy Futhey. Futhey said that moving printing to OIT makes sense because of the digital nature of printing, and noted there would be strong collaboration with areas like web publishing.
She added that tying the DukeCard office more closely to OIT would allow the University to take greater advantage of possibilities of combining card technology with information.
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