Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Meeting
Thursday, December 14, 2007

Attendance: Jason O'Connor, Danny Kaiser, John Augusto, Angie Claussen, Paul Farran, Ola Faucher, Angie Loving, Thelma Simons, Rick Whitmore, Maxine Younes

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

1. Approval of the August 24, 2006 minutes.
   • John Augusto moved to amend and accept the minutes and Rick Whitmore seconded the motion.
   • The minutes were approved as amended.
     
2. Standing Reports:
   • President: Jason O'Connor

   •  The Provost visited SenEx and the group explained to him how KU Governance works with all of the branches and committees and how this impacts University Senate.

   •  November 2 nd Jason, Rick Hale, and Dennis Constance attended the Kansas work lunch with the Board of Regents and legislators who were visiting campus. Jim Modig led the meeting providing big packets of information and a slide show of deteriorated buildings on the KU campus. From the outside KU looks great but inside the buildings are really falling apart. It is more difficult to get money for these kinds of needed repairs. The group took a tour of several buildings at the end of the lunch to see first hand the deterioration.

   •  This fall the withdraw deadline had an extension added. Students were given an extra two days to withdraw by Faculty Senate. There were students in line waiting to drop courses but left upset because they had to go to class or work.. In order to withdraw during those two extra days the withdraw form had to be signed and dated for the original deadline. Cindy Derritt, University Registrar said they had just a few students that utilized this. The student senate appreciated this gesture. The Academic Policies and Procedures (AP&P) committee is working on this for future semesters and they are going through the entire document to be sure all is written consistently. If students want to appeal to withdraw they need to go to their school or department and fill out a petition for retroactive withdrawal. The student will need to have the school or department give their statement of support and then it will go to governance where Molly Mulloy will get them to FacEx for a decision. Bill Crowe is the point person on this and he can either make a decision on the petition to take it to full FacEx. Students must have some sort of extenuating circumstance and they need documentation in order for this to be approved. Kim McNeley in CLA&S said they have only had about six students appeal.

   •  Jason is a member of the SenEx basketball ticket committee with Kathy Reed and Susan Twombly. They met with athletics because athletics is concerned about faculty/staff selling their basketball tickets for profit. There were several tickets posted on e-bay before the first game. The faculty/staff benefit of reduced rate tickets is set up that you are buying a license when you buy tickets and that license can not be transferred. You can only sell them for what you paid for them, which is$72 a pair. If you sell them for more athletics has the right to confiscate your season package without reimbursement.

   •  January 16 th from 8:00-1:00 there will be a KU Research Summit in Wescoe Hall. The faculty are encouraging all KU employees to attend.

   •  AP&P has been charged with figuring out a way to do online pre-requisite checks. If a student has not taken the prerequisite course they will not be allowed to enroll in a course. Jason brought up the concern about students who are taking the pre-requisite course elsewhere and so do not have that course on their record before enrolling. Math has done this for the past semester.

   •  The Provost has said that there is a new advisor online module coming, KU might be building it's own system, this is still undetermined.

3. Treasurer: Angie Loving reported that we received a bill for the survey in the amount of $1470 which brings our balance to $2,941. We are still waiting on the $70 bill for copying.

4. University Support Staff: Maxine Younes reported Keith Yehle will meet with their executive committee on January 3, 2007. A group that included USS members went to the legislative budget hearing in Topeka . Ola Faucher shared that she was part of this group and they were discussing redoing the civil service pay plan and wanted to know what KU is doing for salary for the newly formed USS. Maxine also reported they will be sending a letter on dependent tuition to the Provost in January. USS contacted the Kansas Board of Regents Schools to see if they do supervisory evaluations and found that none do this. They will now be contacting the Big 12 schools to see if anyone supervisor evaluation. USS has gathered information and data on KPERS –Maxine has the information if you would like to see the data.

5. Student Senate: Hannah Love was unable to attend so no report. Jason reported we may have a new student representative in the spring as Hannah has a class during our meeting time.

6.Human Resources: Ola Faucher reported that benefits confirmations will be available soon so we should be getting an email asking us to check ours for accuracy. She also recommended looking at our January paychecks to be sure everything was subtracted as expected. One project HREO is working on is to bring clarity to the post-doc group within unclassified staff. They are putting together a manual for the post-docs. Another project is looking at two years worth of data from new manager orientation to determine what kinds of professional development this population is interested in attending. They are almost finished with the retirement switch – lots of people waited until the very end to make their selections. The HREO website is being revised and they are getting closer to their newer look that will include a calendar that shows HREO trainings, events, deadlines and more. Also included will be an improved policy section with information that has been pulled from the various handbooks. You will be able to sort these policies by alpha, topic or by employment category. Ola asked if the group thought utilizing the KU Portal more and email less would be successful. For example, sending an email saying the Lifetime Wellness newsletter was available to view on the Portal you would then need to log into the Portal to read the newsletter. The committee expressed concern over this extra step to get information.

7. Committee Reports:

• Governance and Representation: Paul reported that the survey for all unclassified staff was completed and he has the results from Kerry Towns . Since our job as unclassified senate is to serve the unclassified staff he felt this information would help us to serve them as they would like. Paul will be working with Thelma Simons and the PR committee to get highlights of the survey results posted on the web as promised. The verbatim comments are hard to quantify so Paul will be working to tally those comments in a more quantitative way and then see if we can address those concerns. The top five issues were professional development, parking, retirement planning, professional recognition and performance evaluation. How do we address these five? Some of these are out of our control, such as parking but others we can work with more easily. The executive committee agreed that the demographics from the survey results should be compared with the demographic data of the entire KU unclassified staff. John Augusto would like to dovetail the promotion of the survey results with the promotion of upcoming events. Ola Faucher offered to help in any way she can. Danny Kaiser said that there would be lots coming in the next two years regarding parking and that by mid-spring he will be better able to identify issues and accomplishments with parking and transit. The survey did show job satisfaction was the same across all income levels and was good so unclassified staff seem to be happy. Paul's committee will meet and come up with ideas to address the top five and present to the executive board at a special meeting which will be held the second week in January.
  
• Elections (ad-hoc): Rick Whitmore reported that in the spring we will need to replace ten senators. He passed around a handout with information regarding the elections. The timeline will remain the same as last year and his committee will look into adding an article in the Oread at the beginning of the process. Rick and his committee agreed that the by-laws are confusing on several different points including: What happens when a senator changes category mid-semester? What is the process for re-apportioning representatives based on these changes? 30 senators are required but does this include the officers? Voting is stated in a way that is not consistent with our practices. Paul Farran agreed to take a look at these with his committee and have a recommendation ready for the full Unclassified Senate at the February meeting. Danny Kaiser suggested that we work towards making Elections a standing committee rather than an ad-hoc committee.
  
• Public Relations: Thelma Simons reported that her committee is meeting again this afternoon and Mike Krings will be bringing a copy of the updated brochure. They are on track to have these printed and ready for the February 13 th legislative meeting. After the brochure, the committee will focus on getting the website updated and Thelma will ask Mike to work on a story about the survey for the Oread.
  
• Professional Development: John Augusto reported the fall programs finished last week with about two dozen people attending the cancer research presentation. The committee will be meeting next week to finalize the spring events. They are looking at having a one day Wheat State tour, an audio reader program, and a KU Continuing Education session. They will be continuing with the “Getting to know KU” theme for the spring. John will work with Paul Farran and Ola Faucher to make sure they are not overlapping.

8. Old Business: there was no old business to report at this time

9. New Business: Paul Farran will be meeting with Keith Yehle in early January to determine which legislators to meet with on February 13 th and if there are any changes that need to be made to their talking points.

Announcements: February 8 th we will be meeting at the Visitors Center and in April at the Burge Union.

Having no further business, Paul Farran moved to adjourn and Angie Claussen seconded the motion. The meeting was adjourned at 1:30 p.m.