Her most impressive answer is the simplest.
Sitting down to be interviewed, Mrs. Andrea Taylor-Hanna, the recently appointed Campus Bursar at UWI St. Augustine, was asked about her values, her outlook on life and how it will guide her in the position.
“A dollar must be used efficiently,” she replied. “It doesn’t matter if it is one dollar or a million dollars, the same principle applies. You must not waste.”
Her answer is grounded, free from the unwieldy statements you normally get in response to questions on values. Mrs. Taylor-Hanna is, after all, an accountant and banker. She is a numbers person, and numbers are not swayed by rhetoric. Numbers are engaged with reality. At present, for the University, for Trinidad and Tobago, for the region, the reality is quite challenging.
“I was this way previously,” she says of her prudent approach, “but it was really refined when I went to work for Republic Bank in their Trust and Asset Management Division. It really clarified a number of things for me. Every dollar counts. Just because you can pay for something doesn’t mean you should. Feel free to save the money.”
Mrs. Taylor-Hanna was appointed Campus Bursar in October 2015, the latest milestone in an over 35-year career as a finance professional. She has worked in several industries, among them banking, where she held several senior positions at Republic Bank, including General Manager of Internal Audit and General Manager of Planning and Financial Control. She was also President of the Institute of Banking and Finance, the component of the Bankers Association of Trinidad and Tobago that deals with education.
“I really do feel that every single thing I have done in my life so far has gone into preparing me for the execution of this function at UWI,” she says.
This includes not only skills in areas like auditing, financial management and financial planning, but also human resources:
“A few years back I decided to do a masters’ degree in human resource development. Now, I’m a financial person but I looked and understood that understanding people and the way they think and figuring out how to motivate them is very important. In the beginning of your career and growth it is about technical skills. Once you have acquired your technical competencies it is all about human relationships and interactions.”
As Campus Bursar, those skills are being tested. With a staff of approximately 100 people, the Bursary of UWI St. Augustine is responsible for every aspect of financial management for the main campus as well as the Medical Sciences campus at Mt Hope. This includes the monthly payroll for more than 4,000 people, cash management, paying bills, creating budgets, and overseeing projects and other investments.
“The challenge at UWI is the sheer complexity of the different strands that come together to produce the delivery of education,” she says, giving the example of the different revenue streams that fund the University and the complexity that entails.
She adds, “I thought I was coming to work at a university but it is really a small city of about 23,000-24,000 people, with all the dynamics of managing a city. That is what makes it different. That is what makes it interesting.”
But the most pressing challenge for the Campus Bursar is the loss of funding that the University faces because of the economic recession. UWI’s task is to maintain its high standard in the education and research opportunities it provides while receiving less funding. The mandate is to “protect the things that are critical,” such as original research and the many areas of study. She also wants to ensure that students still have opportunities for scholarships and to travel abroad. Where cuts have to be made, they should do the least harm, especially to the University’s core activities.
“We have to use this recession to force us to achieve higher levels of efficiency and productivity,” she says. “We have to use it to remove what is worthy of removing and save what is worthy of saving.”
Her approach is to work with the different units on the campus for them to determine what needs to be cut to meet the financial goals.
“Everybody that interacts with this University has to share this burden, from top to bottom, from our staff to our suppliers. Secondly, we must figure out how to continue to deliver the best education that we can to the students without the severe economic challenge affecting that in a negative way,” she says.
She acknowledged, however, that tertiary-level students in general could be affected (like the rest of the country) by the recession, particularly because of potential changes to the Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses (GATE) programme. This is not pessimism. Mrs. Taylor-Hanna believes that citizens should recognize how privileged we have been and continue to be, even with the conditions.
“This is an issue that we have to face, all of us. Let us roll up our sleeves and get on with it,” she says. “Fretting won’t make it go away, quarreling won’t make it go away and blaming somebody else won’t make it go away. Use your energy to figure out how to make it work in your space and environment, and collectively we will work it out for the country.”
She is hopeful that this can happen because it has happened before.
“I was around for the 1980s,” she says, describing how Trinidad and Tobago adapted to those brutal economic circumstances. “Trinidadians came out of the 1980s more respectful of their jobs and more entrepreneurial. It made the individual citizen more dependent on himself to make a living.”
But the new Campus Bursar sees positive signs in the present as well as the past. The representatives of the various campus units are responding to these times. They are stepping forward and finding ways to reduce costs.
“I’m seeing them getting down into their units and figuring it out, and coming back with answers for doing things differently. I am hopeful and every day is making me more hopeful that we will face the challenge and overcome it,” she says.
It’s a slow process but she believes it is the right process to create the kind of shift necessary for the university to thrive in the present environment.
Getting the numbers right is critical, but UWI is made up of more than the numbers.
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