To All Faculty and Staff:

As we begin this new calendar year, I want to take this opportunity to once again affirm my personal commitment to internal control awareness and proper risk management at the University at Albany and within our affiliated entities. Internal controls are the operating practices, reporting relationships, policies and procedures adopted by the University to help achieve our goals and objectives.  They help to ensure effectiveness and efficiency of operations, reliability of financial reporting, and compliance with applicable laws and regulations.  They also help protect our valuable assets, data and other resources from theft and misuse and protect our even more valuable employees by helping insure they are utilizing proper internal controls in their daily work duties.  Within an internal control system, the most important element is the overall control environment which is the organization’s ethical values, integrity, competence, and operating philosophy.  Each individual faculty and staff member shares responsibility for creating and maintaining this environment.

During the past few years, we have made great strides in improving our internal control environment at UAlbany as we have worked together to strengthen our internal controls.   Many of you have participated in risk assessments, internal control reviews and training programs.  Many of you have also given serious thought to the control environment and have taken steps to enhance that environment.  Thank you to those of you who have participated in this process.  I urge your continued full support and participation in related training and assessment opportunities as the internal control team continues to make its way around campus.  Maintaining proper and sufficient internal controls is an ongoing task with new challenges and threats arriving all the time.  A refresher review of our on-line internal controls training or conversation with our internal control staff regarding new developments is always a good idea to make sure we are each doing all we can in this area.

In order to make the required internal control training more convenient for both faculty and staff, we continue to maintain an online training presentation, which can be viewed at www.albany.edu/internalcontrol/.  I encourage each of you to devote about 20 minutes of your valuable time to view the presentation or take 10 minutes to discuss the latest internal control challenges with our internal control staff.

Should you have questions about the University’s internal control program, or should you want to schedule a training session or private consultation, please contact Kevin Wilcox our Campus Internal Control Officer at 956-8131.  Questions or observations may also be recorded, anonymously if desired, on the internal control hotline, at 437-4738.

Thank you again for your participation and cooperation in this important and ongoing endeavor.

Sincerely yours,

George M. Philip

President