Q&A: The Administrative Core Team Provides a Foundation of Excellence for Michigan Ross Units
Administrative support professionals play a vital role in organizations, working behind the scenes to keep daily operations running smoothly. Michigan Ross has an Administrative Core Team that provides essential administrative support services to departments across the school. The nine-member team is led by Director Lisa Frye and Supervisor Sheila Patton.
To learn more about ACT, we asked Frye and Patton to answer some questions about the team’s culture and what they do at Michigan Ross.
How does your unit primarily support Ross?
ACT’s primary goal is to ease and remove administrative burdens from faculty and staff. The team supports Ross business units in various ways, including with these key functions: processing financial transactions; supporting events such as orientations, conferences, and complex meetings; and facilitating staff onboarding and offboarding.
Are there any big projects your team is currently working on and excited about that you would like to make the rest of the school aware of?
Although most of the students are gone in the summer season, the ACT staff does not slow down. This summer, along with Faculty Support, we have assisted with many conferences, including the Positive Business Conference, CPO Consortium, B+I Human Capital Summit, Strategy Conference, the Mitsui Symposium, and multiple orientations and other events.
We are also currently forming task forces to enhance our services, streamline staff onboarding and offboarding, create and standardize our remote schedules, and update our supply hub procedures to ensure efficiency.
What are the biggest challenges that your team faces?
We are a lean team that supports an increasing number of units, staff, and initiatives at Ross. Each ACT staff member is responsible for supporting three to four units at a time. This often requires us to juggle competing priorities for many units and manage high workload volumes, which can become stressful at times. Fortunately, we are able to team up with colleagues in Faculty Support who provide additional assistance to our team during especially busy times.
In what ways does your team collaborate with other units across Ross?
While we support a broad range of departments across Ross, our work also involved liaising between Operations, IT, the Office of Human Resources, and Faculty Support, often serving as a bridge to these departments. Recently, Ross Human Resources partnered with the university’s Talent Acquisition team to develop more compelling job postings to attract a broader and more diverse candidate pool. ACT is currently working with Ross HR and Talent Acquisition to ensure a smooth experience for both the hiring unit and the candidates. ACT will assist with reserving rooms, adding Zoom links to calendar invites, and coordinating with the hiring unit throughout the hiring process.
How does your team collaborate with units across the university?
We work closely with many units across the university on behalf of Ross. This includes collaborating with departments like U-M Procurement Services with purchasing goods and services from many different suppliers. We also collaborate with the university’s Shared Services Center to process financial transactions for several departments across campus. Additionally, ACT partners with different schools and units on specialized projects. For example, the School for Environment and Sustainability recently awarded a grant to the Erb Institute to cover their shared expenses. Because this funding is grant money, there are specific rules about how it must be used and how payments should be processed. Our team worked closely with the Ross Finance team and SEAS to ensure all protocols were followed properly.
If there is one thing that you would like other staff and faculty to know about your team, what would that be?
If there’s one thing we would like other staff and faculty to know about our team, it’s that we are dedicated to providing exceptional customer service and continuously strive to improve our efforts to meet the evolving needs of the Ross community.
In fiscal year 2024, the ACT team, with help from Faculty Support, supported over 200 events. This included creating name tags, assembling swag bags, registering attendees, providing wayfinding assistance, coordinating catering, and handling various other tasks to ensure that students and guests had a fantastic experience.
Are there any traditions or team-building activities your staff likes to participate in?
Our team fosters a culture of positivity and collaboration through various initiatives. We regularly organize team outings and retreats to strengthen relationships and celebrate achievements. During the pandemic, we established two Google Chats — one for work-related discussions and one for fun interactions. This setup helped us stay connected and engaged while working remotely. We encourage questions and interactions in the fun chat to enhance our personal connections. A recent question was, “If you were a barnyard animal, what would you be and why?” Some answers were well thought out, but others were just plain hysterical. This was a popular activity that continues to this day and facilitates team bonding.
