Minutes from
UPSA Executive Board Meeting
Thursday, July 8, 2004

Attending:  Danny Kaiser, Donna Hultine, Karen Ledom, Jill Hummels, Thelma Simons, Dan Consolver, Ola Faucher

Minutes:  Minutes from the June meeting were reviewed and approved with the correction of a typo – changing the word "with" to "wish".

Introductions were made and we welcomed our new representative member Karen Ledom, an assistant director in CLAS.  Consolver will add Maxine Younes, our new representative from the Classified Senate to his e-mail list as we realized she might not have gotten the notice about this meeting.

Consolver also advised that Pam Houston had put together a spreadsheet of board members and committee representatives, which he will forward to us later.

Consolver advised that he was going to try to send out a meeting agenda on the Monday before our Thursday meetings.  Hultine will also try to send out minutes at or before that time.  Consolver will try to compile all of his meeting notes and e-mail them in advance so we'll have time to review them before the meetings.  He's interested in identifying the issues that matter to those we represent.

Committee Assignments and Elections:
Consolver reviewed the election results.  Ledom is our new representative member, Hultine will remain secretary and Hummert will remain treasurer.  Mark Nesbitt-Daly is our president-elect.

Treasurer's Report
Hummert wasn't present at the meeting but we know we did get our new allocation of money. Unsure of the exact amount.  Consolver talked briefly about what we'd spent our money on last year.

Outgoing President's Report
Houston wasn't present at the meeting.  We do know that she has plans to retire sometime during the year.

President's Report
Consolver will post a president's message to the UPSA web site, including what he wants to accomplish during the year.  He'd also like to have various committee reps summarize the issues covered in their meetings and post them to the web site.  He talked about securing permission for some kind of broadcast e-mail with a link to the UPSA web site, advising when there's new content.  Hummels suggested that something like this should be done with some concise bullet points with links for up to 4 items.  Simons suggested a deadline of a week prior to updating each of these categories for timely posting to the web site.  There was much discussion about timing and deadlines for these summaries and meeting minutest need to go to Hummels for edits and then Simons for posting.  Consolver was going to look at committee calendars for their meeting dates and we'll discuss more later.  Consolver's goal is to promote awareness.

Consolver advised that charges to committees had been set by SenEx.  He brought a draft version of the charges.

Committee Reports:

Governance and Representation
Nesbitt-Daly was not at this meeting.  He was the chair last year but we'll need a new chair this year.  This committee this year will again arrange our lobbying trip to Topeka and work on the governance structure of UPSA, in order to become more representative.

Professional Development
This committee needs a chair.   We're looking for topics for professional development meetings and for general meetings.  Consolver mentioned a diversity training institute being offered by Minority Affairs on 4 dates this year. 

Public Relations
Consolver mentioned that he'd like to create a series of brochures – like the Kaitlyn brochure, the next one focusing on research perhaps.  With legislators, research that serves the state of Kansas will go a long way.  Kaiser advised that University Relations might be doing this already with the biodiversity project?

Consolver wants to pursue the topic of "Who Are We?" He's interested in collecting more data about unclassified professional staff members – years of service, education level, departments, official and working job titles, EEO categories, age, gender, race, etc.  Faucher can provide some of this.

Human Resources
Faucher mentioned the new state tax clearance program that is explained on the HR web site.  You must tell job candidates and new hires that their records will be run against the tax roles – looking for payment of Kansas taxes.  New hires from out of the state will get a denial letter and then must provide proof they were living out of the state of Kansas.

She also mentioned the less than 12 month staff option for unclassified employees now.  It's akin to academic year faculty.

Meeting adjourned at 1:30 pm