Brad Sheriff to exit SEMO's VP of finance role, reflects on achievements

Last week, Southeast Missouri State University confirmed Brad Sheriff, vice president of Finance and Administration, will be leaving the university as of Sunday, March 31, after spending three and a half years in the position.

Sheriff didn't give a reason why he is stepping down from his position, instead choosing to focus on the accomplishments he and his team made during his tenure. Despite leaving the university, he and his family plan to stay in the Cape Girardeau area.

"Rather than talk about why I've decided to step down, I'd rather just take the opportunity to sort of reflect on those achievements," Sheriff said. "Now, in terms of what's next for me, I don't know yet. I'm exploring a number of different possibilities, but I don't know yet what the landing spot is going to look like. What I do know is that we are not leaving at this time. Our daughter is still in high school here. We really enjoy the community, and we have a church that we love. So whatever it is, we're still going to be local."

As the vice president of Finance and Administration, in addition to managing all of SEMO's finances, Sheriff oversaw the facilities management, human resources, information technology and public safety departments, as well as the Show Me Center. While it may be a tall task to juggle all of those responsibilities, Sheriff credited the team around him for being able to pull it off.

"A lot of it comes down to the team that you have around you," he said. "When I think of things like IT and HR and public safety, I understand them at a high level. The people who report to me who run them, they understand them at a level of depth that I count on. I very much have to look to the expertise of my team and the people around me. The people that are doing, frankly, most of the real work day to day, whether that's patrolling the campus, getting searches done, recording accounting transactions or whatever the case may be."

Some of the accomplishments of the Finance and Administration team during Sheriff's tenure include implementing flexible work options for university staff, enhancing the security of university data, rebuilding the south grandstands of Houck Field within a tight timeline while hosting all scheduled home games during construction and updating financial practices and business processes across the division.

"I think the thing I am most proud of is enhancing the visibility into the institution's finances that we've been able to create," Sheriff said. "I think almost any faculty or staff member on campus would probably tell you they know more about our financial situation, how our finances work, now than they did four years ago. I think it's incredibly important to bring people that information and help them to understand it, because it's the context for so much decision-making that has to happen."

SEMO president Carlos Vargas and Sheriff are expected to work together to find someone to assume the position, either on an interim or permanent basis. Sheriff said he hopes whoever steps into the role has a strong background in university finance.

"I think my biggest wish, in terms of whether it's interim or permanent, is that it's someone who has solid experience in doing this kind of work," Sheriff said. "Someone who's been a CFO and a chief administrative officer at a university in the past, so that they can come in and, as much as possible, hit the ground running."

Vargas said he enjoyed working with Sheriff for the past three years.

"He has done an admirable job leading SEMO's Division of Finance and Administration and assisting the university in challenges such as rising inflationary costs and workforce shortages," Vargas said. "I wish him success in his future endeavors."

Sheriff assumed the vice president role Aug. 1, 2020, following a "pretty crazy" interview process because of the COVID-19 pandemic shutting much of the country down.

"It was a very long process; unusually long," Sheriff said. "(I had) lots of remote interviews before we all got good at that. Eventually, I was able to come to campus and interview. Even when I was on campus, though, some of the interviews with larger groups — I think the Faculty Senate, for example — was actually on the phone with them rather than in a room with a big group of them."

At the beginning of his employment with SEMO, Sheriff had the opportunity to work with longtime Finance and Administration vice president Kathy Mangels, who served in the role for 25 years, which he said was "extraordinarily helpful".

"I was able to overlap with her for three months before she officially retired," Sheriff said. "She was very, very helpful in helping me to get that initial orientation. She was very gracious in terms of introducing me to some of our banking and investment partners, some of the folks who advise us on things like debt issues. It was, frankly, probably more helpful than I can adequately express.

"She's one of those people that just knew the institution so well. One of the other things that she did for me, without knowing it separate and apart from the overlap, was that she had built by and large a very strong team also consisting of people with a great depth of historical knowledge and institutional knowledge of the university. Even after she left, I still had that team of people to guide and support me as I learned the ropes. A lot of things are the same from institution to institution, but there's always uniquenesses as well."

Sheriff got his start in higher education at the University of Illinois System, where he worked in multiple roles from 1998 to 2010. Following his time there, Sheriff served as the associate vice president for Business Affairs and Compliance at Indiana Wesleyan University from 2010 to 2012. He spent four years — from 2012 to 2016 — as the assistant vice chancellor of Academic Affairs for Business and Finance at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and served as the vice chancellor for Finance and Administration and chief financial officer at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith from 2016 to 2020 before coming to SEMO.

Sheriff received a bachelor's degree in business management from Greenville University, his Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois Springfield and a Ph.D. in global leadership with a specialization in higher education administration from the Indiana Institute of Technology.