Dear colleagues,
I'm writing to update you on short term changes to purchasing support that will become effective Monday, April 21st. The college recently implemented a provost mandated mission critical review process for all new/continuing/replacement hire requests, and as part of that process, I submitted documentation showing the volume of purchasing managed by Chen Xin, our recently resigned Purchasing and Safety Specialist for the period of January 1 - March 31, 2025. During that time, Chen alone was responsible for processing $68k in requisitions for consumables and other equipment purchases across ~1100 E-shop carts, and ~$57K in research purchasing through external vendors across 190 online orders. Thanks to our ticketing system, we are well positioned to justify our staffing requests and validate that our staff members' sense that there's a lot of work to do daily to manage the operations that support our research, teaching, and public engagement missions, isn't an opinion, but demonstrable, irrefutable fact across all of our functional areas.
Understandably given the current circumstances, the college has paused approving any position posting for staff until late May as our and other departments seek to understand the broader impacts of the recent spate of Stop work orders that have come in. I have no quarrel with the college's decision, and the reality remains, that we still have e-shop carts, purchasing requests, safety issues to tackle, and a high volume of daily shipping and receiving packages to manage—all of which were Chen's primary responsibilities that our contingency coverage for planned and unplanned absences are inadequate to meet long term.
Despite being unable to continue with many of our research grants from the DoD at this time, we still currently have other projects from NSF, DOE, NASA, NIH, foundations and private donors that are still active that require purchasing support. As such, the following changes to purchasing support will become effective Monday, April 21st:
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Coverage for purchasing support will be available on M, W, & F only until we are able to hire a replacement; no purchasing requests will be processed on Tuesdays and Thursdays
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Requests for shipping labels should be submitted to the portal 48 hours before they're needed to give us time to troubleshoot Fedex's system, which has been having some disruptive errors that make creating shipping labels unsually difficult and lengthy. If that lead time is impossible to meet, we suggest researchers use the Cornell campus store for faster shipping label support.
I have said repeatedly that we're decently staffed as a department if our sole responsibility is to our teaching and public engagement missions alone (and I can solidly defend this assertion). We are not now, nor have we been recently, staffed sufficiently to adequately support our triple missions. As such, it's impossible to distribute Chen's workload across our remaining staff without compromising anyone's ability to attend to their primary duties, which would lead to burnout and attrition for our staff.
While change is hard at any time, our team remains committed to providing support to our constituents. We ask for your patience as we navigate this disruption.
Best,
Trisica
Trisica Munroe
Director of Administration
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Cornell University
133 Upson Hall, Suite 130
607.255.5949
Tdm68@cornell.edu
Mae.cornell.edu
“Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks.”
Gloria Anzaldúa
Land Acknowledgement: Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters. Learn more about Cornell’s Land Acknowledgment | American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (cornell.edu) and/or visit Gayogohó:no' Sovereignty (gayogohono.org)