ChatMichael Rawls
Budget and Assessment Director
Administration
(804) 828-1275
James Branch Cabell Library, 314-J
rawlsmm@vcu.edu
Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2018
M.A. in History, Virginia Commonwealth University
B.S. in Business Administration, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1994
As Budget and Assessment Director, Mike Rawls manages VCU Libraries financial planning, fiscal compliance, business, and accounting operations. He is also charged with assessing library services and resources through conducting user surveys, gathering and analyzing key organizational data, and benchmarking VCU’s performance against other academic libraries nationally. He provides research and reports about expenditures and best practices in investments to libraries leadership to aid decision making and wise stewardship of limited library resources.
Before his current role, Rawls served as Chief Financial Officer and Head of the Libraries Business Office 2007-2011. He also serves as Executive Treasurer for the Richmond Academic Library Consortium.
Rawls has built a strong reputation in national libraries circles in evidence-based library and information practice. Notably, his research interest focuses on how investment in library materials correlates with production of scholarship. He frequently presents and writes on topics such as how faculty research productivity correlates with library investment and how universities produce more scholarship when their libraries invest more in electronic resources.