07/23/93

CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558

Two new associate controllers named in reorganization

STANFORD -- Whayne A. Herriford and Suzanne Calandra have been appointed to new associate controller positions, University Controller Joanne Coville has announced.

Herriford, who has been a manager in Personnel Services for several years, will become associate controller for school and departmental support, effective Aug. 16.

Calandra, who has more than 20 years experience in corporate finance, will join the university as associate controller for accounting and reporting, effective Aug. 2.

The appointments are part of a restructuring of the Controller's Office. With retirements and other moves, Coville will reduce the number of key managers reporting to her from five to three.

The third is Bursar Jon Erickson, whose duties are being expanded to include additional accounting activities dealing with stipends and fellowships. This will enable the Bursar's Office, Coville said, to represent "the many needs of students and [to] be a more effective partner with the various departments" in the office of the vice provost for student affairs.

Coville said she adopted a streamlined organizational structure that "we believe will serve our clients well while reducing our costs." It is designed to service three broadly defined constituencies: schools and departments, students, and internal needs and or/other central offices.

"We believed that an innovative, new way of doing business was called for which, due to budget constraints and the desire to reduce administrative costs, was more cost effective than the former organization," she said.

As head of school and department operations support, Herriford will oversee functions that are transaction-driven or require extensive interaction with schools and departments, including accounts payable, grant and contract accounting, travel, budgets, payroll and funds.

"This group's challenge," Coville said, "will be to evolve into an effective team structure which has, for Stanford, a very different focus than Stanford has traditionally attempted." She estimated that it would take up to a year for the group to evolve.

Herriford earned his master's in business administration at Stanford in 1978 after obtaining a bachelor's degree in education from Antioch College. He worked through a succession of management positions at Hewlett-Packard from 1980 to 1986. Then after two years in training and recruiting at Activision Inc. of Mountain View, Herriford came to Stanford as a management development specialist.

In 1991, he was named manager of training and organizational development in Personnel Services. Since 1984, he has been a part-time instructor in the business division at West Valley Community College District in Saratoga.

Calandra will lead the unit that represents the traditional corporate accounting and reporting function. The group's major challenge in the next few years will be to overhaul the university's central accounting system: the general ledger and chart of accounts.

Calandra {who pronounces her first name "Susan," although it is spelled "Suzanne") joins the university from the Institute for Contemporary Studies in San Francisco, where she has been controller. There, she has implemented a new accounting system and resolved indirect-cost issues related to government grants.

Before that, she worked for the Marriott Corp. as a corporate accounting director and then as controller of the Courtyard Hotel Division. She was a senior audit manager for Price Waterhouse for 12 years.

Calandra, who is a certified public accountant, earned a bachelor's degree cum laude in economics and business from St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, in 1972.

During deliberations about the reorganization, Coville and her colleagues developed a new mission statement for the Controller's Office, which more strongly addresses, she said, "our desire to be a service provider working in partnership with our clients."

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