The Board of Trustees approved the appointment of Elmira Mangum as Cornell’s vice president for budget and planning on Wednesday.

Mangum, who is currently the senior associate provost for finance and academic personnel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said yesterday she will focus on increasing collaborative decision-making across campus. She also said she looks forward to working with Cornell’s complex network of publicly and privately funded colleges and departments.

Mangum is replacing Paul Streeter, who has been the interim vice president since October 2008. Provost Kent Fuchs said Mangum was chosen for her experience.

“She has a very similar background to what we need at this kind of position,” Fuchs said. “She already knows about budgets and planning.”

As vice president, Mangum’s two primary responsibilities will be planning the University’s annual budgets and developing new processes for implementing and planning budgets, Fuchs said.

Mangum will take a more long-term approach to managing Cornell’s resources than previous vice presidents have taken, Fuchs said. After the economic downturn began, the administration realized it needed to do a better job planning for the long-term, he said. Such planning will now be a priority for the vice president.

Mangum will also need to find ways to reduce the cost of Cornell’s administration, Fuchs said. A reorganization of the central administration was announced in October and several positions were changed or eliminated. The reorganization will save Cornell two million dollars per year, according to President David Skorton, but Mangum will need to reduce costs further, Fuchs said. The vice president for planning and budget position was not affected by the reorganization because of its importance within the administration, he said.

When Mangum arrives to her new job in February, she plans to be “a catalyst for increased collaboration and collaborative decision making,” she said. By increasing communication between teams and departments, and ensuring that everyone works together, resources can be used more effectively, she said.

Her first step to increasing collaboration after she arrives at Cornell will be building relationships around the University.

“The relationships you have across the institution are key to making sure you maximize the value you get” from the University’s resources, Mangum said. “Change and collaboration is about investing the time to get the results that you need.”

Mangum’s current position as the senior associate provost for finance and academic personnel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — where she has been an administrator since 2001 — has brought her experience in creating the same kind of changes she wants to bring to Cornell, she said.

“My history of working in higher education has been centered on collaboration,” Mangum said.

In addition to increasing collaboration, Mangum created new systems for evaluating UNC’s budget process and for increasing the predictability of the university’s budget so that people throughout the community could more accurately plan for the future.

Similarly, Mangum will be developing new processes for implementing and planning budgets at Cornell, Fuchs said. She will also focus on planning budgets more coherently across the University, he said.

Cornell provides an unusual environment for budget planning because of its mix of privately and publicly funded organizations.

“Cornell is a very interesting University because of its dynamics regarding how it’s funded,” Mangum said. She is “fascinated with the complexity” of the University’s funding structure, she said.

That complexity is part of the reason increased collaboration and coordination is needed to manage resources more effectively.

“Part of the enjoyment of the position is working with all the different colleges,” Fuchs added.

Streeter, the interim vice president, declined to comment on the position or on his experiences as vice president.

As a member of the central administration, Mangum will consult and help make decisions about Reimagining Cornell, including decisions about the budget model task force recommendations, Fuchs said. The recommendations, which were released on Nov. 5, included suggestions that the University decentralize its budgeting process. Under the model proposed by the task force, individual units within the University would receive the revenue they generate and would be responsible for their own costs or a proportionate amount of costs they share.

Regardless of the final Reimagining Cornell decisions, Mangum said she will use the Division of Planning and Budget to implement the changes the administration wants to make.

“[The Division of Planning and Budget is] there to enable, facilitate and help the University move in its desired direction,” she said.