BUDGET MINDED: - Illinois College of Optometry

BUDGET-MINDED
ICO’S EVERLASTING EFFORT TO
KEEP THE CURRICULUM FAT, WHILE
RUNNING THE COLLEGE LEAN
“We have some hard decisions to make regarding the budget,” said John Budzynski,
ICO’s Vice President for Business and Finance/Chief Financial Officer, at the
beginning of a bi-weekly meeting of the President’s Administrative Cabinet. PAC is
Dr. Augsburger’s special team, his seven vice-presidents who branch out around the
College, overseeing every class and clinic, nook and cranny, nut and bolt…well you
get the picture.
At the time of that meeting, the Trustees were due to visit campus in a month for
their fall gathering. The budget had to be in place. The members of PAC were there
to do the job.
It is a team effort. ICO is more than students in a clinic. It is a complex organization,
layered with divisions of responsibility. Running an institution of higher learning
such as the Illinois College of Optometry – and running
it at the caliber that ICO is run – takes rigorous oversight.
It takes the 16-member Board of Trustees, who are
ultimately responsible for governance of the College. It
takes the nine key people (including Dr. Augsburger and
his Chief Executive Assistant, Maggie Ho) in PAC, as well
as their staff members, to make sure the lights go on every
day, faculty are in place to teach, and there is money in the
budget to pay for it. The workings are extraordinary.
As illustration, consider Opie Nimon’s area spreadsheets.
Nimon has been ICO’s Chief Engineer for the past 12
years. He really knows every nook and cranny. Nimon
oversees the 383,000 square feet of ICO’s campus and all
its grounds. He’s got the College broken down into zones:
the main building, Brady Hall, Residential Complex,
administrative area, the mail and copy room, security, the
dock and receiving.
Every day when Nimon arrives at 6 a.m., he goes through a list of checks of the
facility. When he’s at home, he can run checks from a state-of-the-art environmental
control system. In the morning, he makes sure the cleaning crew has gotten the
Residence Commons clean, that the mail has gotten sorted, teaching materials
printed, the cafeteria set with paper towels.
He uses a multitude of colorful charts and graphs. “I’m tracking everything,” he
says. He watches equipment and special projects, and he watches his $1.9 million
budget. “Utilities are our challenge right now,” he sighs.
When he can, Nimon saves the College thousands each month on utilities. Yes,
that’s thousands per month. Annualized, he has saved ICO between $49,000 and
$65,000 on gas prices in the past two years. “When I see an opportunity, I work
with the Business Office to lock in rates,” Nimon says. “And we’ve done a lot of
energy savings projects, like changing to energy efficient light bulbs.”
FEATURE: BUDGET-MINDED
In this Annual Report issue of ICO Matters, we
look at the books. What does it really take to
run the Illinois College of Optometry, a place
with:
259 Employees
612 Students
383,000 square feet of space
80,000 square feet of Residential Complex
A 5-story garage
64,000 feet of grounds
And a mission. “Our goal is to never have to
close,” says Vice President for Human and
Physical Resources, Laura Rounce. “We run 24
hours, seven days a week. To make that workable
is a lot bigger than you think.”
Consider these annual expenses:
Maintenance: $1.3 million
Utilities: $563,411
Clinic: $7 million
Education: $11 million
The President's Administrative Cabinet in session
(clockwise, starting at bottom left)
Dr. Arol Augsburger, President
Dr. Valarie Conrad - Vice President for Compliance and Risk
Management Services
Dr. Kent Daum - Dean/Vice President for Academic Affairs
Laura Rounce - Vice President for Human and
Physical Resources
John Budzynski - Vice President for Business and
Finance/CFO
David Korajczyk - Vice President for Development
Dr. Leonard Messner - Vice President for Patient Care MATTERS
Services/Executive Director of the Illinois Eye Institute
Dr. Mark Colip - Vice President for Student Affairs ICO FALL 2008
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