The Southeast Technical Finance Office has been recognized with an award for Excellence in Financial Management  by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities during 2010. The awards program, which began in 1997, publicly recognizes the outstanding contributions of the system’s college and university employees who work in finance and facilities management.  The system’s Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer,  Laura King  said, “We are proud that we have so many outstanding employees, with their leadership and assistance of every employee at every Minnesota state college and university, tremendous progress continues in finance, facilities and administrative excellence.”

Nominated by Southeast Technical President James Johnson, the Outstanding Service awards are given to individuals who demonstrated outstanding contributions toward furthering professionalism in financial management or other contributions in financial reporting, data integrity, internal controls, budget development and monitoring.  Johnson said, “It is essential in these critical times that we have a financial team that understands the need to leverage dwindling resources for the future and Mike Kroening and his financial division are one of the benchmark teams in the system.”  

College Vice President and CFO, Michael Kroening explains that although the award is directed toward the finance office, it is really a college-wide effort that is a result of events that include a cross section of faculty and staff representatives who have been involved in Continuous Quality Improvement planning. “Under increased need to become more fiscally educated, the group has been successful in recommending changes in the way that we operate and achieve cost efficiencies and awareness, it really takes the cooperation of the college as a whole to make it happen.”