Chris Helmuth, Budget Center Director for the Friedman School of Nutrition, School of Medicine Portfolios
Chris joined the Budget Center and Tufts in November 2015 after eleven years in Finance and Research Administration at Harvard University. Most recently, Chris served as director of Finance and Administration for the Department of Immunology & Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he was responsible for planning and management of all financial and administrative activity within the department, including a large portfolio of federal and non-federal sponsored awards.
What aspects of the Budget Center position appealed to you?
This position was a good fit because of the amount of research in the schools of medicine and nutrition. I’m very familiar with that environment. Harvard is similar to Tufts in how decentralized it is so I could understand the challenges TEAM was addressing. I thought it was a positive sign about the university that Patricia (Campbell) and Tom (McGurty) were willing to invest in thinking this initiative through in such depth. It was one of the things that excited me about coming to Tufts.
What have you focused on in your first two months with the Budget Center?
It’s been trial by fire. I started on November 17 and have been doing whatever I possibly can to help, even though we were in middle of the budgeting process when I got here. I’ve been giving the EADs as much support as I possibly can, and my team as well.
What are your early impressions of the Schools of Nutrition and Medicine?
Working with Friedman is exciting because they are on such a growth trajectory. They are hiring new faculty and have plans to introduce new programs and initiatives. People are excited about the new dean there. The medical school has a large research portfolio, which is exciting but also a challenge financially because it has become so hard to get research funding. Depending on the source, a lot of grants don’t support infrastructure costs. I’m looking forward to working with both of the schools to address challenges like this.
What experience from Harvard do you think will be valuable to your work here?
I understand that we are here to support faculty and schools, we’re here to support the missions of the schools we serve.
At Harvard I was involved with the development and implementation of a financial dashboard geared toward research administrators, and I’ve been able to immediately be involved at Tufts in the rollout of the grants module in Axiom. There’s a lot of potential for the grants module to become a valuable resource in how we manage research budgets and Tufts has the potential to be a leader in this area. There’s a long way to go, but the fact that Tufts’ processes and systems are not static, that this project is moving forward, that is a good sign. I’m impressed with how quickly the Budget Center has implemented new systems like Axiom and Tableau.
How would you describe the mindset of your team?
It is a very collaborative environment in general and there’s a lot of learning going on. People are willing to help and share information. That’s the case across the whole Budget Center, and the whole finance department. One of the things I would love for people to know about my team is that we are advocates for all of them. If someone needs help, we want to help. That’s who we are; we are here to support the organization.