Brielle Melillo was hired by the Office of Student Life last week to fill the role of financial coordinator. She is tasked with assisting campus organizations with budgeting and other financial matters, previously a responsibility of other employees in the office or to the auspices the organizations’ student leaders. Melillo’s responsibilities will include executing university financial processes that campus organizations participate in, such as submitting purchase orders or check requests. She will also facilitate organizations’ financial growth, and ensuring organizations spend more reliably and efficiently. Melillo has already begun working with both student organizations and other university administrative staff towards the goal of improving the efficiency of financial processes. SGA President Matthew Hunt said “The SGA is very excited for Brielle to be here,” and that she “will be a more definitive, more specific help financially [for RSOs].”
Melillo was hired after an interview process that took place over the past few months. A job description was sent out, with input from the SGA Cabinet, and eventually two candidates were brought in for in-person interviews. Both candidates—Melillo being one—were interviewed individually by Assistant Dean of Students Kristie Damell and Dean of Students Kenneth Nilsen. They were then interviewed by Hunt, SGA Treasurer Patrick MacLane, and Jane Gilbarty and Christopher Shemanski from the Office of Student Life. Hunt and MacLane also assisted with developing the questions that would be asked in the interview.
Melillo’s hiring was in response to a number of recent changes in financial requirements of student organizations imposed by the Office of Finance as a result of changing governmental compliance and reporting requirements. “It’s about management and disclosure, and lifting that veil and asking where the money is going,” said Nilsen. The Office of Student Life believes that the addition of Melillo to their staff will assist in bridging the gap between procurement and student organizations. Previously, the process for submitting a purchase requisition—which is now encouraged as a replacement for use of purchasing cards due to better auditing capabilities—involved multi-stage approvals. A requisition required approval from multiple staff in the Office of Student Life, including Nilsen, before it was submitted to the Office of Procurement. The new procedure will involve only three steps, with Melillo as the gateway.
The Office of Student Life is also looking into working with student organizations, as well as other parts of the administration, to agree upon common vendors to be used for specific goods and services. Some vendors, such as B&H Photo Video, and soon Amazon and Home Depot as well, have the ability to tightly integrate with Stevens’ financial system Kuali. The integration allows administrators like Melillo to choose items from a special internal catalog and reference those items specifically on a purchase requisition. This eliminates the need for a more formal purchase order process and streamlines the purchasing process. Even for vendors that do not support this integration, Stevens and student organizations thereof may be able to receive more competitive pricing from vendors that Stevens has made deals with. The Office of Student Life plans on using student organization feedback to find specific hot spots of purchasing, such as custom T-shirt printing, that may benefit from the use of a single vendor with special negotiated pricing. Nilsen also said they want to look at locally sourced options, as well as vendors that “are more aligned with the University’s missions and goals … by buying locally, we can impact the community greater.”
In addition to facilitating financial efficiency, Melillo will also be assisting with planning and accountability for student organizations. According to Hunt, one of the SGA’s goals is to make budgeting “more specific, more reliable, and more repeatable.” Melillo will be working closely with the SGA Cabinet, whose meetings she has already attended, as well as the Senate standing committee on accountability, to monitor RSO funding. For now, she will act as the coordinator for actions and investigations taken by the Senate accountability committee, including assisting with audits of RSO finances. However, Hunt says that the “The accountability [committee] wants to shift away from audits toward facilitation.” Cited as a long-term goal by both Hunt and Nilsen, Melillo will eventually help with tracking how money was spent and for which events. This will be used to provide feedback on how to change spending for future events, as well as how to facilitate organizations achieving future goals they might have, which aligns with recent SGA policy that RSOs must use the OrgSync Checkbook tool to track spending actuals for events and capital improvements. Dean Nilsen says he wants Melillo to find “ways that students can better use the current services we have.” Melillo will also be responsible for analyzing student organization spending, and categorizing the spending into financial categories, such as food or travel.
“Brielle comes with a lot of banking history, working at investment banks,” said Nilsen. Previously, Melillo worked as a manager at Bank of America, where she directed ten employees with a budget of about $5 million. Before that she was a banker, and before that a teller, at JPMorgan Chase and Co. Melillo is hoping to bring use her financial experience to help students with processes they are not familiar with. When asked about her new position, Melillo said, “I love it here. It’s so beautiful. The students are nice.”
