Our current financial manager, Christy Dalton, came to the School of Mathematics as an accountant in 2004. Prior to that, Ms. Dalton held the position of assistant business manager at the Rialto Center for the Arts. Her degree in communications from Georgia State University in 1998 led to employment for a few years in theater management and then to the Rialto.

Because she proved to be such a valuable staff member, Christy was promoted to the position of financial manager for the SOM in 2005. Together with our efficient accountant, Inetta Worthy, Christy deals with all aspects of funding for the School of Mathematics. In fact, the financial office processes payrolls for faculty, staff, and students; reimburses travel expenses, and supply purchases; manages state, grant, and foundation budgets and retains files for auditing.

According to Christy, her work in theatre management helped her prepare for the current position because she learned early on how to cope with a tight budget, frequent deadlines and the resulting stressful environment. To further prepare for her current position, Christy completed two Georgia Tech programs: the departmental financial manager certificate program and the supervisory development training program.

As the financial manager, the first change that Ms. Dalton implemented was to reorganize the budget management process. She reviewed projects and reformatted budget reports to make them more transparent and easier to audit. Christy has converted most paper documents to electronic format to reduce the paper usage and to make it easy to access data. Unlike most departments, the School of Mathematics has very few p-cards (charge cards that state employees use for work-related purchases). The financial office approves each purchase and allocates the charge to the appropriate project on a daily basis. Accountability, accuracy and efficiency are very important to Christy Dalton.

How does she de-stress? Christy likes to travel, whether it is a weekend road trip to Memphis to pay her respects to Elvis or a two-week journey across different countries. Traveling gives her the inspiration to practice and hone her photography skills. When she can’t get away from town, she can usually be found at a local cinema catching the latest independent film.

Ms. Dalton has enjoyed working with dedicated staff and faculty and was amazed to find that brilliant mathematicians are also approachable. The most challenging part of Christy’s job is to locate the discretionary funds needed to support undergraduate and graduate enrichment activities such as seminars, the annual high school mathematics competition, recognition programs and awards for student accomplishments. Because of restrictions on the use of state and federal funds, we have not been able to implement some great proposals for student related activities. Ms. Dalton’s next important project is to become more involved in development and fundraising for the School of Mathematics.

Her colleague Sharon McDowell reflected the opinion of the SOM in her following observation: “Efficient. Resourceful. Trustworthiness. These are the three words that come to mind when I think of my co-worker, Financial Manager Christy Dalton. The School of Math is extremely fortunate to have Christy on the staff and managing the budget. There has not ever been a time when I asked her a financial question and she did not have the answer. She seems to work very hard and does it all with a smile.”