Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Meeting
August 24, 2006

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Attendance: Jason O’Connor, Danny Kaiser, Paul Farran, Jeannette Johnson, Angie Loving, John Augusto, Angie Claussen, Rick Whitmore, Mark Nesbitt-Daly, Thelma Simons, Maxine Younes, Hannah Love

 

The meeting was called to order by President Jason O’Connor.

 

1. Approval of the May 11, 2006 minutes.
1. Danny Kaiser moved to approve and Rick Whitmore seconded the motion.
2. The minutes were approved as read.

 

2. Standing Reports:

 

1. President: Jason O’Connor reported that SENEX met all summer and the charges for the various committees have been set. Met yesterday with AP&P. Promotion and tenure subcommittee will meet next week to look at practices, this is a faculty matter. University Support Staff will be designing a brochure about who they are and their role at KU. Appeals have been going to AP&P but should be going to FacEx and Bill Crowe will be handling them from this point forward. (Most of the appeals are for students that did not adhere to deadlines.) Jason explained that our nametags include our department to show the diversity of representation on the executive board of unclassified senate.

 

2. Treasurer: Angie Loving reported she still needs to get the account information. Jeannette suggested she talk with Kathy in University Governance about this. Angie’s role will be to authorize expenditures. Jeannette also reported that the bus company was negotiated back down to their original quote from the KU Edwards Campus trip.

 

3. University Support Staff: Maxine Younes reported that their executive board met with Provost Lariviere and spent the hour chatting about how they see their role and what his views are on the University of Kansas. He told them he was very impressed with the clean up after the microburst and had trouble getting on campus himself. They were going to have a report on the tuition that is available for you and your spouse but ran out of time so Brian will make a presentation at the next meeting.  Their personnel committee is making a list of free or reduced services for staff i.e. Health Center, Writing Center, etc. and will post this on the web and as handouts. Maxine mentioned that you could receive government rates at hotels even when traveling on personal business. Another idea shared was the sliding scale at Fraser Psychological Services.

 

4. Human Resources: Ola Faucher was unable to attend so no report.

 

5. Student Senate: Hannah Love reported that their office has been renovated and we should stop by 410 Kansas Union to check it out. They met last night and talked about the multicultural opportunity fund which has $90,000 more to go toward events so they are working on this. Freshman Senate election nominations are due on Friday. They are continuing the discussions on lowering the cost of textbooks and Hannah talked with Bob Basso and several big name publications about this. In the spring, they will be getting information together to work on legislation in Topeka. Hannah was asked about the recycling project and said that she had not heard much other than they had some budget problems that has slowed down adding additional bins.

 

3. Committee Reports:

 

1. Jason had us review the charges from our web site and several changes were made (see attached updated sheet). Next week we will be asking for volunteers for our committees and the University committees. They will be posted on the web and people can sign up or nominate others this way.

 

2. Governance and Representation: Paul Farran presented the survey that Unclassified Senate will be sending out in October for all unclassified staff to complete. See old business for details.

 

3. Professional Development: John Augusto reported that he currently has five members and they will meet next Friday. He is going to be contacting Sandy to get on Provost Lariviere’s calendar and would like some ideas for topic for him. Any other topic ideas for events that you have should go to John as he plans the upcoming year’s events. *** An email follow-up from John on 8/28 stated that the date had been set for October 10 from noon-1:00 in the Big 12 room, Kansas Union.***

 

4. Public Relations: Thelma Simons reported that she needs volunteers for her committee.

 

5. Elections (ad-hoc):  Rick Whitmore reported no report.

 

4. Old Business:

 

1. Jeannette Johnson reported that we have several University committees that have vacancies that we need to fill. The parking committee has changed the wording on their committee such that the retiree spot could now be an unclassified employee and does not need to be faculty. This is a change from before when it was three faculty members with one that could be retired. Now it states they have three faculty members and one retiree. One of the retirees concerns were that they did not want to park on campus necessarily – but they wanted to be able to drive through campus. There was, at one time, a discussion about allowing them to have a drive-through pass instead of a parking pass. If we know of a good retiree nominee please let Jeannette know. Jason O’Connor will serve as our representative on the United Way committee. The following are openings on University Committees for unclassified staff: Employee Recognition – three vacancies; Academic Computing and Technology – one vacancy; Academic Procedures and Policies – one vacancy; Calendar – one vacancy; International Affairs – one vacancy; Libraries – one vacancy; Organization and Administration – one vacancy; Planning & Resources – one vacancy. Mark Nesbitt-Daly suggested that we need someone with advising experience on AP&P so that they can say “no” right away if needed.

 

2. Thelma Simon reported that if Jeannette would send her the committee info electronically she would get the information up on our site. She will then draft a message for Jason to send out August 29^th. A reminder will be sent on Tuesday, September 5^th to complete nominees by Friday, September 8th. Jeannette commented that the employee recognition committee requires many names because the members have to be representative of all areas of campus. She said this committee would be a great experience and a good way to learn about the University and all the good people that are here.  It is pretty time consuming, as they meet for half to whole day meetings and then break into teams to get more information about the staff. This committee also helps with the unclassified retirement dinner in the fall and the dinner in April.

 

3. Danny Kaiser reported that Parking would have transit sub-committee openings. We should feed names to Tom Mulinazzi for this committee as he feels someone from the Unclassified Senate should be a part of this group. Park and Ride is doing very well – almost too well at busy times, as there is only standing room available. The busiest times of the day are  in the morning when students are coming to campus, 30-45 minutes right before classes start and then between 2:00 and 3:00 as students are leaving campus. The Park and Ride lot is restricted from 7:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. After 5:00, anyone with a KU parking pass can park in the lot. At 10:30, the fourth bus is taken out of circulation and then from 5:30-10:30 p.m. there is just one bus running. During basketball games, the bus will be available for the faculty and staff to ride. A good time to take a tour on the bus would be on the hour because classes have started.

 

4. Paul Farran reported that Governance and Representation met with Carrie Towns in OIRP about the survey to go out to unclassified staff and they have taken her recommendations and come up with a survey draft. This will cost $1,000 so Jeannette will compose a letter and Jason will send to Lindy Eakin and Ola Faucher to see about splitting the cost with Unclassified Senate. We are not willing to insert any additional items at this point in the process. The survey will be available in October as Carrie said this is the month that gets the best response rate. The group decided that sending before fall break would be best so, this will go out October 2^nd and employees will have until October 13^th to complete. There will be a reminder email sent on Monday, October 9^th. Staff will need their KU ID to log-on but the survey will be anonymous as the demographic data collected from logging on will be kept separate from the survey responses. The group agreed that there should be a blurb in the email that addresses this point.  Paul Farran moved to approve the Unclassified Senate survey with email amendments being sent to him by 5:00 today. John Augusto seconded and the motion was passed. The goal of this survey is to find out how Unclassified Senate can serve the unclassified staff and define us demographically. Various ways of distributing the results were mentioned, this will be determined by the committee later. Paul asked the Public Relations committee for help in advertising for the survey perhaps in the Oread just before the survey and on the Unclassified Senate web site; we could advertise the meeting with the Provost in the same ads. Paul will check on what it takes to become a KU featured link and will pursue a story in the Oread. The survey is being done through OIRP because of the need to go through the new KU portal. This is done so that demographic data can be gathered and then results can be queried and analyzed statistically.

 

5. New Business: there was no new business to report at this time

 

Announcements: John Augusto reported there is a Post-Doc Committee looking at how they fit into the University employment structure.

 

Having no further business, Thelma Simons moved to adjourn and Paul Farran seconded the motion. The meeting was adjourned at 1:26 p.m.