Administrative services

One of the UAT initiative's primary goals is to improve the university's culture of service excellence through restructuring. In order to accomplish this, the Service Excellence Transformation (SET) program was established in part to redesign how our central services are provided and administered. Through detailed process redesign and abiding by the SET principles, we aim to improve efficiencies and reduce bureaucracy in how we deliver these administrative services.

SET plans to achieve this goal by adhering to three objectives:

  1. Create administrative structures that focus the maximum amount of the university's resources and energies on its core mission of excellence in teaching, research, and community engagement;
  2. Restructure so we can achieve financial sustainability; and
  3. Reimagine how we do our work so we can continue to provide high-quality services with fewer staff members.

Functional workstreams

A significant amount of the SET program is focused on administrative transformation, which has been divided into six areas of focus, or what are known as functional workstreams. These workstreams reflect key areas of administrative services at the university, and are as follows:


Shared services

In addition to the functional workstreams, SET supported the creation of the Shared Services unit, which manages cross-functional, high-volume services across the university. The goal of creating the unit is to create greater efficiencies in service delivery that will result in both cost and time savings. One key component of Shared Services is to create a Service Innovation team that will help us take advantage of automation technology where possible.

Learn more »


Services within the colleges and faculties

The new operating model aims to standardize administrative roles within each college and faculty. Each college has a general manager (CGM) and most faculties have a faculty general manager (FGM). These roles interface between senior/service partners and the colleges/faculties/units. Partners report directly to their central unit portfolio but will work with their FGM or CGM, respectively.

  • CGMs report to the college dean to manage any administrative resources in the faculty and work collegially with a group of assigned, function-specific senior partners to provide operational leadership and administrative services to the college.
  • FGMs report to the faculty dean to manage any administrative resources in the faculty and work collegially with a group of assigned, function-specific partners to provide administrative services and to monitor the performance of the faculty.

Colleges will be offering academic services through their college offices. For more information on these services, please see the academic services page.

For more information on the administrative model developed by SET, please refer to the SET Interim Report.