When Brian Foisy accepted the new position of vice president for finance, he asked whether it would be possible to live on campus.
Foisy, who started at the University of Idaho Aug. 31, said it can be hard to stay connected to the main mission of a university on a day-to-day basis when working on the back end of the operation.
“It”s emails, it”s numbers on a piece of paper, it”s bond documents, it”s board meetings,” Foisy said of his administrative position. “But when you live in one of those buildings, the entire experience is very different.”
Foisy comes to UI after Ron Smith, former vice president for Finance and Administration, stepped down earlier this year to teach accounting at UI.
Before UI, Foisy served as vice president for Administration and Finance at Minot State University in North Dakota, where he said it was common for faculty and staff to live on campus.
He said living on campus at Minot State was such a good experience, he thought he should also live on campus at UI too.
“When you work in accounting, budgeting or payroll, it might be more difficult to connect you part of the process to goal of the institution, which is to educate students,” Foisy said. He now lives in the Scholars building Living Learning Community with honors residents.
Foisy said he can watch a new building go up on paper, but never leave his office to actually see it being built.
Foisy
“Those backend functions are critical to everything,” he said.
But according to Foisy, living in university facilities, eating university food and being around students who rely on the same services helps him realize how important his work is. Foisy said he came to UI because he felt President Chuck Staben was a leader he could get behind.
Some leaders, Foisy said, are effective at getting things done, changing the system all at once and upsetting longtime workers along the way. Foisy said he liked that Staben is ambitious and aggressive, but focuses on streamlining day-to-day processes in order to make long-term changes.
Foisy said Staben”s goal to increase enrollment by 50 percent in the next decade will be something his department addresses in the next few years.
“We have 12,000 students, and we want to get up to 15 or 16,000 students,” Foisy said. “That raises logical questions about where they”ll go, whether we have adequate space on campus or whether we need to build additional space.”
For now though, Foisy is focusing on the learning curve that comes with a transition into any new position.
“I really don”t believe anyone has any kind of monopoly on the truth or the answers, and if you”re willing to share, I”m willing to listen,” Foisy said. “If I can champion some change, I”m willing to do that.”
Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @itshannah7