Financial and Strategic Operations Analyst Karley Lewis, was recently awarded the Professional Faculty Excellence Award at OSU’s University Day for her dedication to sustaining CLA’s financial health.
Karley Lewis
By Colin Bowyer, CLA Communications Manager - November 13, 2024
“When I tell folks I’m a financial analyst, people’s eyes typically gloss over and they already have visions in their head of me staring at Excel spreadsheets all day,” said Karley Lewis, finance and strategic operations analyst at the College of Liberal Arts. “That’s partially true, but there’s really more to it”
Lewis, now entering her 14th year at OSU with six of those years at CLA, sees herself more as a translator or interpreter of numbers and figures into actionable data for college leadership to wield and inform decision making on topics like scheduling, credit hour trends, annual budgets, or enrollment. For her noteworthy contributions to CLA and the university, Lewis was recently awarded the Professional Faculty Excellence Award at OSU’s University Day in September 2024.
Lewis didn’t always start out in data science, but consistently used data creatively to her advantage. After growing up in Placerville, a small, rural town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Lewis attended the University of California, Davis, as a psychology major. Initially wanting to enter the mental health field, it was an internship at a local hospital that prompted Lewis to switch gears from going into clinical work to entering a master’s in psychology at Chico State University. Eventually, she wrote a master’s thesis on facial recognition.
“I very quickly realized that a hospital setting was not for me,” said Lewis. “But entering a master’s program allowed me to creatively work with data in ways that I hadn’t done before, which set me up for positions later on in my professional career.”
A scenic Pacific Northwest road trip by Lewis’ parents prompted them to suggest she look for jobs at OSU. In September 2010, Lewis began as a faculty research assistant at the Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families. At the Ford Center, Lewis worked as a contributing member of grant-funded research teams, assisting in the overall programmatic management of multiple kindergarten-readiness and parenting education research projects over the span of eight years. Looking for a new opportunity to engage her creative and analytical side, she applied and started working for CLA in September 2018.
As finance and strategic operations analyst, Lewis operates at the intersection of finance, budget, academic, and human resources data. The position, created by former CLA Dean Larry Rodgers, allows Lewis to work with colleagues across campus using data to address the “big messy questions.”
Lewis explained, “The overarching motivation of this position is to ensure CLA has the financial resources needed to fulfill its mission, understand where it sits financially, and be good stewards of students’ tuition dollars.”
Lewis utilizes the wealth of data at her fingertips to examine broad trends and provide administration with “big picture” forecasts. On a more detailed level, Lewis visualizes data findings for comparison, justification, and benchmark reporting for strategic planning purposes, traditionally balancing financial and programmatic needs.
“One of the most difficult balancing acts a school director must perform,” said Director Tim Jensen of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film, “is educating faculty on budgetary matters without overwhelming them with detail or boring them into indifference; our job is not only to responsibly manage our units’ resources, but to also inform other about the salient factors and relevant context of our school’s budget. Without Karley’s keen understanding of all-things-budget, clear and professional communication, and generous sharing of expertise, this balancing act would be impossible.”
The college has become a go-to destination for budget management, which Lewis’ colleagues have attributed to her groundbreaking development of intuitive, equitable tools and dashboards. Lewis routinely collaborates with partners across the university, including Christina Saechao, CLA’s financial strategic partner, and other sectors of the university, for higher-level budget work. She currently contributes a portion of her FTE to the Office of Budget & Resource Planning to assist with special projects and data visualization, in addition to collaborating over the years with University Information and Technology, Enrollment Management, Financial Strategic Services, the Division of Research and Innovation, Division of Educational Ventures, as well as other financial planners across the academic colleges.
During the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a time of much stress and anxiety for faculty and staff across CLA, Lewis was a steadying presence, always ready to assist schools and programs with their often urgent budgetary questions. The university was forced to consider a range of cuts and Lewis brought her deep expertise to fraught conversations, prepared with data to help guide administrative decision making.
“Every faculty member in the college has benefited from Karley’s behind-the-scenes work,” said Nicole von Germeten, associate dean for CLA. “She can generate the data-driven answers or provide accessible visualizations for more variable strategic thinking.”
Out of all of the data Lewis works with, the root of nearly every question seemingly arrives back at efficiencies in course scheduling. Scheduling, according to Lewis, seems simple, but can be incredibly complex and highly analytical. Lewis, in coordination with Strategic Operations Administrator Nicole Wolf of the School of Psychological Science, developed a scheduling dashboard to help schools within CLA better understand enrollment trends and other related metrics to advance efficiencies in scheduling. .
“It’s easy to fall back on copying and pasting course schedules from prior terms,” said Lewis. “The big challenge is being responsive to students' needs with the capacity the schools currently have to offer. Something we’re looking at now is if there is a way to deploy AI to efficiently develop a schedule that’ll help satisfy all parties.”
The most rewarding experience Lewis is encountering is seeing a culture shift where administrators are now comfortable utilizing data to support decisions involving forecasting 5 - 10 years down the line. “It’s been exciting to see administrators adapt data to their advantage’” said Lewis. “I couldn’t be in the position I am without the support of my CLA colleagues, particularly Larry [Rodgers], who created the position, pointed me in a direction, and let me run with it.”
Starting in November 2024, Lewis will temporarily be taking on a new interim director role within the Office of Budget and Resource Planning, but will continue to support CLA in helping to manage its financial resources and guide administrative strategy.