Page 26 - College Planning & Management, March 2019

Business MANAGING HIGHER ED
Educated Buying
Building and maintaining diverse purchasing and procurement capabilities for colleges and universities is educated buying.
BY MICHAEL FICKES
PURCHASING AND PROCUREMENT for colleges and universities contributes to the education of students in at least two important ways. Quality purchasing
choices provide the institution with a comprehensive selection of quality products from landscaping to building furnishings and heating, ventilating, and air conditioning products. Quality prod- ucts contribute to the quality of students’ experiences on campus.
Second, wise economic purchasing choices aid in preserving precious institutional funds that can then help support faculty, textbooks, laboratories, and other core educational products.
“These are the two key ways that purchasing and procurement help to meet the educational challenges facing America’s colleges and universities,” says “Public College and University Procure- ment,” a survey of the State Regulatory Environment, Institutional Procurement Practices, and Efforts Toward Cost Containment.
Many college and university purchasing directors today achieve these two goals of quality and economy through the use of a pur- chasing policy widely called supplier diversity.
What is Supplier Diversity?
“Supplier diversity has been around for decades,” says Rhonda T. Crawford, Ph.D., director and small business liaison officer
with the University of Southern California (USC) Small Business Diversity Office in Los Angeles. “Supplier diversity means reaching beyond your own group and doing business with other communi- ties or social groups. It doesn’t mean sacrificing quality. You must still look for capable and competent suppliers.”
Supplier diversity programs require careful designs, notes Veronica F. Cook, M.S.O.M., executive program director of the Supplier Diversity Program that operates within the Office of the Associate Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer of Univer- sity Business Service at the University of Connecticut.
“A supplier diversity program is a program designed to strategically and demonstratively represent an organization’s commitment to be inclusive in its procurement processes,” Cook says. “Such a program routinely examines existing procurement policies and processes with the goal of ensuring that historically
26 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / MARCH 2019
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