Process
Operational Excellence is a guiding commitment from our strategic plan that informs the way we approach our work. It is also a multi-year initiative we are pursuing to achieve the goals of advancing institutional positioning, increasing resource efficiency, growing operational maturity, and strengthening financial resiliency.
As a multi-year initiative, we are seeking to be deliberate and thoughtful in our approach to achieve our goals.
Year 1 – Research, Consulting, and Planning
In Fall 2024, we asked the external consulting group Huron to help us review and envision ways we could adapt to the changing environment and achieve our goals around financial resiliency. To review the steps taken during this process you can review:
In Spring 2025, we presented 20 recommendations reviewed by leadership for either further research and/ or implementation.
Year 2 - Deep-Dive Research, Review, and Implementation
In Fall 2025, we are continuing to implement recommendations from the report. We are taking two approaches:
- We are taking specific steps in FY 2026 to create a bigger margin in our operating budget.
- We are launching recommendation 13, Conduct a Comprehensive Organizational Assessment, to determine key structural changes.
Organizational Assessment
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Cheryl Moore-Thomas, and Vice President for Administration and Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Kristy Michel, will be leading implementation of recommendation 13. They have been reviewing historic data and will be presenting Cabinet with recommendations in October. These recommendations will incorporate ideas generated from the research and reports created through the work related to other recommendations in the Operational Excellence March 2025 Report.
Cabinet will review the organizational assessment findings and recommendations and
then work to determine who the subject matter experts within the Loyola community
are that relate to each of finding and their related recommendation.
The Cabinet will form work streams based off organizing these findings by experts
within the community. The goal is to have these work streams launched early November.
These work streams will review the materials created by the Provost and CFO with Cabinet’s
input, validate the assumptions, and provide additional considerations related to
them.
The President will receive a final report from all work streams in early January,
in time for the Cabinet to review and for potential savings to be incorporated into
the FY 27 budget.
Please visit the Updates page to follow this process.