Elizabeth Torres, Budget Center Director for the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tisch College and Operations Portfolios
Elizabeth has been at Tufts in the Dean’s Office at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine on the Grafton campus for 15 years. Most recently she served as the budget and fiscal officer (BFO) for the Cummings School. Prior to coming to Tufts, Elizabeth worked in the pharmaceutical industry. She has an MBA from UMass and a degree in biology from MIT.
How has your life at Tufts changed since you joined the Budget Center?
I was at the veterinary school for 15 years. Moving to the Budget Center has given me the chance to see how other schools operate and how we all fit together. I have a better sense of how the university works and what it takes to meet the needs of Tufts’ broad community. Each unit is unique and has its own challenges when it comes to finances but you see similar themes. For instance, everyone feels financially pressed and is trying to do the most they can with finite resources. Working with the Budget Center has also connected me to a wonderful group of colleagues. We hired a lot of people from all over the university and from outside Tufts, but the staff clicked as a community right away. There’s a great sense of camaraderie.
What have you focused on in your first six months?
My team and I have spent a lot of time learning about the units we are working with so we can understand their needs and how to best serve them. Tisch College and Operations were new to me, so there was a lot to learn. Operations, in particular, is such a complicated organization — everything they do affects everybody else. Meanwhile, we are trying to make sure all the units, including the Cummings School, are getting the same level of service they got before the Budget Center opened.
How do you see the Budget Center changing the way schools and divisions do their budgeting work?
Tufts was so segregated, all the schools were doing things their own way. The work we are doing now will give us a foundation to understand the differences and find common ground in how schools do business.
We have tried to cut down on the number of spreadsheets program managers work with, and all the data entry they had to do. The goal is for the Budget Center staff to prepare forecasts and budgets using Axiom based on information the program managers give us. We want the process to be as easy as possible.
What milestones lay ahead for you and your team over the next six months?
We are still developing functionality in Axiom, especially related to the Operations budget that I’m hoping to focus on. Other than that, we need to complete our first full budget cycle with the new system and our new organizational structure. We will continue to learn about our customers and refine our processes. Next year we will know a lot more than we do right now and things will be smoother.