Updated July 1: Kelly Ratliff and Karl Mohr took up their new posts today, Ratliff at Finance and Reource Management, and Mohr at Campus Planning, Facilities and Safety.

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By Dateline staff

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi on Friday (June 6) put into effect her earlier announced plan to divide Administrative and Resource Management, and appointed a new associate chancellor, Professor Prasant Mohapatra, to lead the campus’s effort toward further administrative realignment and transformation.

Mohapatra, former chair of the Department of Computer Science, moves into his new role after a year as the campus’s interim chief information officer and vice provost of Information and Educational Technology. The campus is expected to name a new CIO-IET vice provost within a couple of weeks.

The ARM split had been awaiting the appointment of a new vice chancellor to lead the financial side, in the role of chief financial officer. The CFO recruitment is underway, with a selection expected by January.

In the meantime, longtime ARM Vice Chancellor John Meyer decided to leave the university. The search for his replacement will begin in the fall, with an appointment expected by July 2015.

The interim leadership plan, effective July 1, splits ARM as follows, under two senior associate vice chancellors, both of whom are veteran UC Davis executives:

• Kelly Ratliff, the campus’s chief budget officer, who will now have responsibility for a unit called Finance and Resource Management, which includes the Shared Services Center and Human Resources.

• Karl Mohr, assistant executive vice chancellor in the provost’s office, who will now have responsibility for Campus Planning, Facilities and Safety.

(Each unit's name is different than what was announced originally.)

All this transition, Katehi said, provides an opportune time “to take stock of our overall administrative structure” — the task she assigned to Mohapatra.

“To ensure that our administrative and management configuration is on a par with the excellence of and in support of our academic mission, it is important for us to examine in a comprehensive manner whether there are other administrative realignments that would enable an effective, versatile and transparent administration in support of an institution that aspires to be a leader nationally and internationally,” Katehi said. 

Ratliff and Mohr

Today, Ratliff serves as associate vice chancellor for Budget and Institutional Analysis. “Kelly has provided stalwart counsel and leadership through the past few years of serious budget challenges and, among other things, has also performed outstanding work devising and implementing the new incentive-based budget model,” Katehi wrote in a message to the campus community.

As senior associate vice chancellor for Finance and Resource Management and interim chief financial officer, Ratliff will oversee ARM’s divisions of Accounting and Financial Services, Human Resources, Budget and Institutional Analysis, the Shared Services Center and Organizational Excellence. 

Mohr’s new portfolio, as interim senior associate vice chancellor, takes in ARM’s Campus Planning and Community Resources, Design and Construction Management, Facilities Management, Utilities, Safety Services, the UC Davis Fire Department and administrative support services for the Police Department.

Mohr served as assistant vice chancellor of Capital Resource Management in ARM and also worked on the 2020 Initiative before joining the provost’s office full time in 2012.

To fill in for Mohr, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter has tapped someone who formerly served as an executive in the provost’s office: Robert Loessberg-Zahl, who today serves as director of Institutional Analysis, part of ARM.

Feedback welcomed

Katehi urged the campus community to be involved in the examination of the university’s administrative structure.

She described an outreach plan that will include town forums and other consultations, and said she will ask administrative staff “to be extensively engaged in identifying the management capabilities that need to be enhanced, thereby enabling us to accomplish our vision as the leading UC in the 21st century and allowing us to fulfill our land-grant mission in California, nationally and around the world.”

The chancellor said she welcomes feedback, thoughts and input “about the changes you believe would enhance the overall effectiveness of UC Davis’ administrative operations.”

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