ChatMichael Rawls
Budget and Assessment Director
Administration
(804) 828-1275
James Branch Cabell Library, 314-J
rawlsmm@vcu.edu
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.
Rawls’ deep connections to VCU began when he was a student in the VCU SChool of Business. He earned a B.S. in business administration in 1994 and then worked as a mortgage analyst for several years before returning to VCU to study history at the master’s level. He served as a Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant, Department of History, and completed his master’s in 2003. He earned a doctorate in Public Policy and Administration in 2018 with a focus on higher education administration and institutional effectiveness. Before his current role, he 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.