A meeting to inform administrators and faculty about the recent Purchasing Department transition took place on Thursday, April 1, in the University Center North building.
Jill Schunk, of the IU Bloomington Purchasing Office, was host of the open-session meeting, where she discussed the recent IU purchasing reorganization and answered questions relating to the purchasing changes.
“With this transition, we hope to develop better contracts, better service and support and push vendors for better prices,” Schunk said. “We are diligently working to manage and direct spend. Overall, we want to negotiate in the best interest of the university.”
The Purchasing Department reorganization became effective on Feb. 1. This change will create a centralized Purchasing Department throughout the IU campuses and will eliminate the “middle man” and a lot of duplication by contacting commodity sources directly.
Mike Kerstiens, director of IUS Accounting Services, co-hosted the meeting with Schunk to respond to questions regarding the reorganization.
“We need to be strategic about this change and ask ourselves how many budget dollars we have, if we should buy it and if it is under a contracted vendor,” Kerstiens said. “This transition will help create a better communication agreement within IU campuses as a whole.”
Another expectation for the purchasing team is a desire to keep business in a lot of local and regional campuses. The IU Bloomington Purchasing Department will be re-evaluating contracts and bids to determine what vendors may service the campus best.
“The way we do our business impacts the entire campus and institution,” Schunk said. “We want to reduce contract spending and have one central commodity area. We are re-looking at our past vendors to see which will provide us with significant cost-savings.”
With the economy’s decline, IU and other campuses are looking to find the best purchasing methods that will save their university fiscally.
Schunk said this move has been discussed before and has become enforced because of the global changing economy.
Like Schunk and Kersteins, Ed Kochert, accounting services department representative, believes that this process will be a positive for IU Southeast.
“The purchasing reorganization has a lot of potential cost-savings benefits to IUS and all of IU,” Kochert said.
Police Department
Another reorganization process that IU Southeast and other IU campuses are undertaking is within the Police Departments. On Feb. 26, a news release was sent out to inform people about the Police Department’s desire to become a centralized department.
Unlike the Purchasing Department, this change was not for financial reasons, but created so IU campus Police Departments will move toward a more consolidated public safety and emergency management formation. Campus chiefs will report to the new director of public safety in Bloomington and also to campus administration.
IUS Police chief Charles Edelen said he hasn’t been told much about the consolidation because it is early in the process. However, he said he believes it will have a lot of upsides to it.
“President McRobbie wants to have a more centralized Police Department, and there have been similar other things that indicate he is in the direction of centralizing other campus departments,” Edelen said. “I see many benefits to this change. Each campus department will have similar policies and procedures and it will increase our purchasing power and our resources.”
Although the Purchasing Department reorganization is occurring simultaneously with the Police Department transition, there is no connection between the two besides timing.
Dana Wavle, vice chancellor of Administrative Affairs and Finance, said the IU campus Police Departments were formally consolidated, but through time, each campus became more independent with their policies and procedures.
“In the last two decades, each department grew more independent in how they respond to incidents,” Wavle said. “This consolidation will provide uniformity and consistency among the departments. They will all be under one policy with shared resources. This change will strengthen the ability of the university and IU as a whole.”
The transition has been officially announced, but the emergency response team has yet to be put together. Also, the public safety director has not been hired yet.
Despite IU Bloomington being the essential campus for this transition, all IU campuses will have some of their own input into the new policies.
“We are all going to have some input because each campus is a little different,” Edelen said. “For example, IU Southeast’s Police Department deals with parking, whereas Bloomington has their own Parking Department because they are a much larger campus.”
By COURTNEY MCKINLEY
Staff Writer
comckinl@ius.edu