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Staff opportunities ‘limitless,’ says Gee

Posted on | November 4, 2009 | 144 views |

By Adam King

Though changes to the Ohio State culture are in their infancy stage and might not be tangible, President Gordon Gee reiterated that staff would only see their opportunities blossom once the changes are fully implemented.

Gee made the statement during the Staff Conversation with President Gee, which the University Staff Advisory Committee hosted on Nov. 2. Staff could ask any question of the president from the Fawcett Center auditorium floor or via e-mail, and one person asked how Gee’s “One University” concept embraces staff.

Gee said Ohio State currently is a confederation of colleges that look out for their own success and compete with one another in how to shift money around. Eventually, however, those walls will disappear.

“The impact on our staff will be enormous,” Gee said, “because instead of your job being just one part of this confederation, all of a sudden you have limitless opportunities to make a difference at the institution in terms of creative energy and being members of task forces outside your normal learning circle. I think that’s what’s important. It’s a powerful idea, but it’s going to take a lot for us to get there because it’s so embedded in academic concrete.”

University leaders, managers and staff continue to alter their approach, Gee said, to be more accountable to each other. Ohio State, he said, has to toss out old habits of organizing itself horizontally and rewarding employees vertically.

“It’s about developing a much different reward and recognition structure,” Gee said.

To that end, as an example, senior human resources officers now have a dotted line to the vice president of human resources; senior fiscal officers now have a dotted line to the senior vice president for business and finance.

“We’re now going to have some commonality in our resources, values and direction,” Gee said.

Gee also touched on change athe university when one woman noted it was frustrating to see how her unit in charge of health services to students wasn’t as well funded as it should be. Gee said the university’s master planning process is looking at how to improve the quality of life in all areas of campus life as well as how best to organize OSU to be most efficient.

“We’re finding out with student health, as we discovered with the H1N1 virus and its impact in an enormously important area of this institution, sometimes we don’t realize some of the real treasures because we just take them for granted, and we’ll try not to take anyone for granted like we should.”

For an archived streaming video of the event, visit streaming.osu.edu/mediawww2/presentations/townmeeting/110209.

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