Quarterly Financial Affairs Service and Innovation Award Goes to Phyllis Wingate

The Office of Financial Affairs created a financial innovators award known as the Financial Affairs Service and Innovation Award to recognize those throughout the university who make significant and lasting contributions to the university through bold, innovative and creative approaches to common, everyday university problems.

The award is open to any university faculty, non-faculty, academic, administrative or skilled crafts/service/maintenance employees who bring forward fresh ideas that lead to process efficiencies, cost savings and/or increased productivity. Each quarter, one employee will be selected to receive the award, and then at the end of the calendar year, an annual award winner will be selected from the four quarterly winners.

We are pleased to announce the Q3 2023 award winner as:

Phyllis Wingate, director of budget and planning, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences

Wingate joined the university in August 2015 and moved into her current role as director of budget and planning in July 2020. Wingate’s day-to-day job duties include payroll and budget cycle entries, payroll costing allocations, graduate assistant administration and a host of other responsibilities.

Each month, U of A departments receive a report from the Associate Controller’s Office listing compensation paid to their employees that have “in error” ledger entries. These entries, if uncorrected, can cause payroll expenses to be incorrect on the department’s budget reports. Wingate was assigned responsibility for working through and correcting “in error” entries. The process to fix these entries is very manual, making the task particularly daunting. With Fulbright College experiencing significant growth in all areas, this was a huge added monthly responsibility. Wingate and her team, however, rose to the challenge and within a few short months, had reduced the number of errors by 70%. All the “in error” entries were successfully resolved by a rigorous July deadline.

Simon Chua, senior assistant dean of finance and operations for the Fulbright College, said of Wingate, “[t]he significant reduction in identified issues … within a year reflects her dedication and effectiveness in managing this complex task. The detailed and meticulous nature of her work, where she had to individually research and correct issues for each identified employee, highlights her commitment to accuracy. It’s clear that Phyllis has gone above and beyond, working long hours over many months to successfully navigate through the complexities of this process. Her leadership in the budget and planning team has been valuable, and her contribution to the Fulbright Business Operations Center is highly appreciated.”

Wingate’s dedication to ensuring that not only Fulbright College, but also the university at large, has accurate budget and financial reporting on which to base critical decision making, makes her a well-deserving recipient of the Q3 2023 Financial Affairs Service and Innovation Award. Please join us in congratulating Phyllis Wingate!

If you know of an employee deserving of recognition for our next FASI award, we would love to hear about them. Please email your FASI nominations to either Sandy Sturgeon at sandras@uark.edu or Susan Slinkard at svslink@uark.edu.

This story also appeared in the University of Arkansas News publication.