The state Board of Regents has split up its task force designed to save the regent universities tens of thousands of dollars.

“The need to transform the university is well understood now and is well underway, and this approach will allow us to maximize our efforts,” Regent Larry McKibben said. 

The regents’ Transparent Inclusive Efficiency Review implementation management team has been organized into categories including facilities, administration, and academics.

Each grouping is headed by one of the regents and includes contacts among consulting groups and the regents for each of the universities.

Regent Milt Dakovich will lead the facilities category and Kelly Flege, the University of Northern Iowa campus representative for TIER, will be the point contact.

Regent Larry McKibben will lead administrative savings. The main contact between the consulting groups and the regents will be Mark Braun, the University of Iowa’s president’s chief of staff and vice president for External Relations, who took a leave of absence to be the transformation project manager for TIER.

Regent Katie Mulholland is in charge of academics and Miles Lackey, chief of staff to Iowa State University President Steven Leath, will be the point contact.

“This is the right time to align the management for TIER with the board’s existing committee structure,” McKibben said.

Regent President Bruce Rastetter said the reorganization was necessary to provide the correct amount of attention to detail and to get each of the campuses culture’s to embrace the project “so it’s long-term sustainable.”

“TIER is a long-term commitment and I emphasize long-term commitment by the board to continue to work on being more efficient and employing best practices at our three universities,” McKibben said.