CAER’s primary purpose is to promote excellence in our compliance efforts and to facilitate the prioritization and management of enterprise risks, which is critical to supporting Rice's mission of academic excellence. The group meets quarterly, providing a forum for members to exchange insights, share perspectives, and collaboratively guide institutional risk and compliance priorities.
There are many other reasons for the Working Group, some of which include:
- Educating fellow compliance and enterprise risk managers at Rice on matters pertaining to compliance and enterprise risk that span across various areas of the university.
- Contributing insights to the university’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) process of prioritizing the top enterprise risk management challenges and concerns.
- Ensuring that instances of noncompliance and critical issues related to the management of enterprise risk filter up to executive leadership, including the Executive Compliance Committee.
- Assuring insurance carriers and external auditors that Rice has processes in place to manage enterprise risk and coordinate compliance efforts.
- Demonstrating Rice’s commitment to exercising due diligence, as defined by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, with respect to establishing compliance standards and procedures and in identifying and preventing wrongdoing.
- Helping to communicate and promote a culture of compliance and risk-awareness across the university.
Governance:
The Associate Vice President, Ethics, Compliance and Enterprise Risk and the Senior Director, Enterprise Risk Management and Compliance serve as co-chairs of the Working Group and report updates from the Group to the Executive Compliance Committee.