Attending:  Thelma Simons (president), Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Pam Houston, Donna Hultine (secretary), Kathy Stiers (classified senate), Dan Consolver (treasurer), Jill Hummels, Kathryn Tuttle and Ola Faucher.

Janet Murguia, Executive Vice Chancellor for University Relations spoke to the group.  She is hopeful that during the legislative session she’ll be able to help us coordinate for lobbying days with various University groups.  Instead of each school having their own lobby day, she’d like to be able to harness all individual groups together, i.e., representatives from the unclassified staff from all schools would lobby together on the same day.

She felt that the end of February or the beginning of March would be a good time and Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were best.  She would be willing to help us set up appointments and to make sure we spoke to key legislators.  She encouraged us that it was helpful to the legislators to hear from their constituents.  She’d like to coordinate with us to get a good number of staff to go together.

She proposed holding a quick session before our scheduled day to do a walk-through to make sure we’re relaying the same messages.

Simons felt it would be helpful if Murguia addressed an UPSA general meeting to talk about this, probably in early February.

Murguia told us that letters were helpful when targeted to the right people.  She welcomes any interest we have.  She will try to make our lobbying time efficient for us and said that we need a “war room” effort to communicate the needs of higher education to the legislature. A lobbying effort will help them put a face to our requests.

There was some discussion that when classified staff went to lobby, they had to take their own vacation time to do so.  There was some sentiment that this might be able to be considered work time but we would need to get an official ruling and it would just look better if we took our own time.

Murguia thought it would be a good idea to invite Tom Sloan to a general meeting as well.  He’s already familiar with classified senate issues and we should make sure he knows us too.

We discussed some of the issues that concern unclassified employees – a major issue is that we’ve become “uncoupled” from faculty because of SB345.  Houston pointed out that because of the uncoupling, some internal decisions have driven us further apart, i.e. no unclassified employee increase can be greater percentage than the faculty.  Kaiser repeated Kent Glasscock’s comment that when people are speaking to them about the University they never hear about anyone but faculty.  Tuttle pointed out another uncoupling in the separation of K-12 and higher education in terms of funding.  The legislature has been looking at the latter as if it’s a luxury.  They need to realize that higher education does improve the economy.

Murguia said that once a lobbying week is nailed down, we can do some kind of special promotion. Talking to the legislators is a victory but getting the word out to the public is better.  She mentioned that the Hall family is putting together a grass roots effort to educate elected officials on why raising revenues is good for the state.  They’re trying to get more public support for higher education and reminding people that we need a work force to meet the needs of the future.

Minutes:

Minutes from the November 7, 2002 Executive Board meeting were approved as submitted.

Treasurer’s Report:

No news, no new expenditures.

 President’s Report:

Provost Meeting - The Provost is supportive of the idea of tuition waivers but it would take money.  Even with the budget concerns, he feels there will be no new position cuts.  There is some talk of creating a 10-month employee with benefits over the summer.

SenEx Meeting  - The proposal to move the dates of the fall break did not pass.

Committees: 

Governance and Representation – No news.

Professional Development – Kudos to Kathryn for her presentation, "Tales of 'Harvard on the Kaw': How Hogback Ridge became Mount Oread".  There were 29 people there and it was video taped by KUJH.

We discussed future topics.  Mike Hoeflich will be happy to talk about the Patriot Act.  Human Resources may present “Coping with Change in Turbulent Times” and “Everyday Creativity”.  Johnson mentioned that we might ask Joe Potts to talk about international student recruiting in light of heightened security….it would be important for staff who deal with these students so they can plan ahead.

We decided that February and April should be general meetings and March, May and June will be lecture series.  Once these are set, we’ll ask the Provost to encourage staff to attend.  Johnson advised that the Provost has already agreed to do this.

Public Relations – No report.

University Council Report

Regent Lew Ferguson met with University Council. 

The search for a new Ombudsman has begun.  This is a unique position and has not been open since 1985.

Classified Senate Report

Stiers advised that Janet Murguia also address a classified senate meeting and encouraged them to be part of the lobbying effort.

Human Resources Report

Faucher talked about the student hourly increase in pay.  She also advised that there are now team nominations for employee of the month.  She also told us that their newsletter will be retained in paper form even though it’s available electronically.  She’d like some feedback about this.

Old Business

Discussed the planned brochure highlighting unclassified professional employees.  Simons asked if we could come up with a number of unclassified staff who also teach.

New Business

Houston voiced a concern that with looming budget cuts, we’re the most vulnerable class of employee.  We sign one year contracts but as representatives of UPSA we should remind administration that we’re human beings.  Faucher advised that Human Resources does try to place both classified and unclassified staff who lose their positions.  There is now a partnership with Equal Opportunity Employment to get unclassified resumes in the cue for open positions.  Houston felt that our message should be we’re human and we’re here because we love the University.

The meeting adjourned at 1:15 pm.