Nate Knuffman shares updates on the University’s budget
The chief financial officer talks about how new strategic operational and financial goals will advance the University’s mission.
The Well sat down with Nate Knuffman, vice chancellor for finance and operations and chief financial officer, to discuss the University’s initiatives to improve operations and identify cost-saving opportunities for the upcoming fiscal year.
In April, you talked about the fiscal year 2025-26 budget, which includes a $50 million sequestration. Can you share more details on how the University will identify those savings?
There are a couple of different ways to achieve savings. Traditionally, institutions identify a percentage that is equally allocated to every unit. But we have found that approach often leads to superficial budget efforts that are less impactful, and it isn’t as equitable as it presumes that every unit is starting from the same level of efficiency.
We’re approaching this effort more strategically, thinking about opportunities to make lasting changes and asking ourselves the difficult questions about what the institution should and shouldn’t be doing moving forward. As a part of that process, we have identified four major areas where we see opportunity:
- Organizational effectiveness, looking at leadership programs and personnel
- Resource optimization, focusing on shared services and nonessential expenditures
- Academic and program enhancement, to identify cost saving opportunities within academic operations and programs
- Student-centered financial strategy, to explore how we can optimize our financial aid program and support services
We plan to share more details on each of these later this summer.
In the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees meetings last month, you talked about ServiceFirst and how this initiative can help achieve the University’s operational and financial goals. Can you explain how it supports operational effectiveness?
The need to improve our operations has been consistently discussed since Chancellor Lee H. Roberts was installed. In fact, when UNC System President Peter Hans announced him as the next chancellor, he made a point of emphasizing Lee’s experience in this area and his expectation that Carolina elevate its operations performance to match its incredible academic reputation. We believe there is an opportunity to do that, and that’s what ServiceFirst is about. It’s focused on spending less time on transactions and more time on core mission activities. In doing that, there are opportunities to save money. We simply can’t afford to not be operating as efficiently as possible in this current environment.
The scope for this effort looks at all our administrative services and academic operations. The administrative services include finance, human resources, information technology, research administration, communications and procurement. Outside of that, we are working with Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jim Dean to define areas of academic operations that we would also explore.
We’re beginning to set up the governance structure and had our initial steering committee meeting at the end of May. The working group has representation across the campus with subject matter experts in all those various areas of focus. We’ll be working in each of those areas in more detail through the summer and into the fall. It’s important to note this effort isn’t being introduced with a predetermined outcome in mind. We are launching this effort in collaboration with our campus partners to think about how we might operate better and more efficiently, and we’re going to share more specifics with the Carolina community in the coming weeks.
Earlier this spring, Scott Savage was named associate vice chancellor for organizational strategy and performance to help lead this effort. Why was it necessary to create this position?
This area is a key priority for the chancellor that requires a dedicated leader, and we’re thrilled that Scott has joined us in this role. He is uniquely positioned to be a successful leader. He served most recently as the executive vice dean and chief operating officer at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy and had a track record of using data and uniting stakeholders to achieve meaningful savings. And he did this while maintaining the No. 1 school ranking at the pharmacy school.
