Leading in Times of Change; Practical Approaches to Stay Agile, Navigate Resistance, and Center Students when Allocating Resources

Alan Gilbert - CUNY Brooklyn College
Terri Dautcher - NACUBO

This session will present a suite of pragmatic tools and practices that can be leveraged by financial leaders when managing change and complex financial or operational challenges. CUNY Brooklyn College’s CFO will share the tactics and tools he used to support collaboration, navigate resistance, and build sustainable budgets when the college was faced with significant enrollment declines and corresponding loss of revenue.

When nothing was ‘business as usual’, the Brooklyn College’s CFO turned to free tools and resources available through NACUBO to support his efforts to reduce a structural deficit while still centering student outcomes and equity as resource allocation decisions were made. The CFO and his NACUBO co-presenter will share how he pivoted when urgent issues surfaced, and the tangible, practical tools he leveraged. The tools that will be shared and discussed in this session were developed by NACUBO with input from a diverse profile of 26 colleges and universities. The tools and techniques that will be shared in this session are designed to support data-informed decision-making practices, resource prioritization, and collaborative engagement with senior leaders across professional and academic disciplines. Practical tips and ideas to prepare for and navigate difficult presentations, conversations, and data-informed decisions will also be shared, along with the bank of free resources and tools available at NACUBO’s Student Success Hub.

Learning Objectives

  1. Communicate proven, professional practices that are being deployed at colleges and universities to strengthen collaboration and support stakeholders who may be experiencing resistance to change.
  2. Articulate tactics to support agile, responsive, flexible approaches to respond to changes in the ecosystem; financial, political, demographic, etc.
  3. Access pragmatic tools, shared during the session, that can be used when planning, developing budgets, and allocating resources when scarcity is an issue.

CPE Available

  • 1 Credit: Finance