Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Meeting
October 12, 2006

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

 

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

 

1. Approval of the August 24, 2006 minutes.
1. Thelma Simons moved to approve and Danny Kaiser seconded the motion.
2. The minutes were approved as read.

 

2. Standing Reports:

 

1. President: Jason O’Connor

                                                               i.      Hannah Love and Bob Basow are working with a committee (Craig Martin, Jeannette Johnson, students, and others) on textbook pricing. Right now books are running up to $180 per book and then a new edition is being published so they are unable to sell them back. They are working to find a way to reduce this extreme cost to the students. The bookstore was unable to address the issue so this committee was formed.

                                                             ii.      Athletic allegations: As far as academic misconduct is considered, we have no influence over the decisions that were made.

                                                            iii.      Kansas Board of Regents has the Kansas cores outcome for postsecondary schools. Jim Mielke is our KU representative for the program. People are wondering how this affects higher education and what the history is behind the program. Nobody seems to have a clear idea on how this is to work with all of the different Universities in Kansas and our different missions.

                                                           iv.      The meetings with Dennis Constance and the Provost have been going well. There is discussion of including Rick Hale and Ruth Ann Atchley in those meetings. Meet with just Dennis thirty minutes before the meeting with the Provost to go over agenda items. Danny Kaiser will be attending the October 23^rd Provost meeting as Jason will be out of town.

                                                             v.      The Provost has made some decisions in the past few months that have had an impact on unclassified staff. One is the policy of no children in the office and the other is not allowing graduate students a vote on faculty tenure. The five presidents will meet October 13^th to discuss what should be addressed with the Provost. Do we need to poll unclassified staff for their opinion on these new policies? This brought up the broader issue of childcare and the crisis in our community not just KU. Is this a need that KU should be addressing? Hilltop will be expanding but the additional availability will go to students and faculty. This can and is used as a recruiting tool.

                                                           vi.      Office of admissions and scholarships has moved their scholarship award date up to November 1^st so that a decision can be made by December 1^st. Marlesa Roney talked to Senex about the ways that this new deadline information was distributed.

 

2. Treasurer: Angie Loving reported that there was no change in the balance – it remains at $4,411. She expects to have expenses that include a photocopy bill of $70 from professional development and a $1,000 charge for the survey. Jason will be talking one-on-one with Ola Faucher about helping to fund this survey, which will go out October 16^th.

 

3. University Support Staff: Maxine Younes reported they have a work group that is meeting with Ola to discuss the new rules as they continue to define themselves. They are discussing a more fair way to distribute merit increases and how to use longevity. This could be used as a retention tool. They completed their new brochure, which the group all commented was great! Maxine also reported that they are working on defining the members of their work group, as they need to rotate in some new people. Also working on a supervisor evaluation.

 

4. Student Senate: Hannah Love was unable to attend so no report.

 

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

 

3. Committee Reports:

 

1. Governance and Representation: Paul Farran reported that the survey for all unclassified staff will go live on October 16^th. There will be a test email sent to the group to be sure that all is working okay. To get the word out about this Jason O’Connor will send an email; the web site will advertise this starting Monday and there will be an article in the Oread. On the 23^rd a reminder email will be sent saying that it closes on Friday. Mike Krings is also writing an article so there will be two separate articles in the Oread about unclassified senate. Paul asked Thelma Simons if the events listed on the web will be on the calendar and if there was a chance of being a featured link on the front page of the KU web site. After the survey is concluded, Noelle Kurth will do data analysis for us and provide graphs, charts, etc.

 

Paul also reported that he met with Keith Yehle and our legislative visit will be on February 13^th, 2007. Thelma Simons will add this date to the web site. The talking points for this year will include deferred maintenance, budget and bringing revenue to Kansas industries. The group will meet in December, have the new legislative list, and see if there are other issues to discuss. They will not be talking about guaranteed tuition or admission requirements. They will thank them for collecting interest on tuition and giving that back to us and for providing better student health options.

 

2. Public Relations: Thelma Simons reported that on September 29^th her committee met and includes Mike Krings, Robin Bedenbaugh, Carolyn Thurman and Shanda Hayden. They reviewed the current brochures and are gathering information for a new one which will include info from OIRP on how we help Kansas, they survey results, recent KU achievements, and then do some bragging about the unclassified staff on KU communicators, women of distinction, employees of the month, etc.  Robin will put into HTML so it will work on the web. This will be good preparation for legislators and just to know about us in general. October 24^th is their next meeting and they will discuss how to promote professional development events, the brochure and the potential of being in color and how to campus mail them.

 

3. Professional Development: John Augusto reported that they met October 2^nd and Allyson Flaster put together a fall agenda handout. He was very proud of his committee as they pulled it all together in just one week. The event on the KU culture was set because of the number of people wanting to get involved on campus. The hope is that there will be some new employees there. We can use the Park and Ride bus to attend events away from our building. It was suggested that we take a tour of KU Continuing Education in the spring. The committee has started to work on the spring dates. Thanks to Thelma Simons and PR for getting the flyer ready for the Provost talk. The Provost has said that he would like to do this every year.

 

4. Elections (ad-hoc):  Rick Whitmore was unable to attend so no report.

 

5. Jason commented that since the Unclassified Professional Staff Association has become Unclassified Senate he feels that the group is much more organized this year. Professional Development and Governance committees have many more committee members and a better agenda. He told the group nice job.

 

4. Old Business:

 

1. Jeannette Johnson reported that Organization and Administration (O&A) have a major agenda item in that they want to develop a handbook for faculty and unclassified staff. The Provost would like a University policy web site so they are looking at computer packages. There was a handbook in the 60’s and 70’s that ended up being a place where people put in everything you can imagine as it was a place to put information. The group sees this getting smaller and then linking people to appropriate places.

 

2. Danny Kaiser reported that Parking is working on a transit system and will get information out as quickly as it is updated. Park and Ride is pleased with the progress the buses are running despite a few problems early on in the process. They have four buses and in September had 35,000 boardings so they are already doing what the city does. Park and Ride  and the “T’ = 2,000 a day and KU on Wheels = 7,000-9,000. The joint study with the city is moving along. There will be a higher level of collaboration, zero sum, they want what is done together to be efficient. There are currently three transit systems in the city with KU on Wheels, the “T” and now Park and Ride. Will get this narrowed down on how to organize the plan to take from zero sum to develop a stronger contractual arrangement where the city and the University are appointed to a board and they oversee the transit of the city. May end up with one or two providers, whichever model is used the students will have representation because they will be the largest rider base. Park and Ride is trying to get the word out to faculty and staff to let them know that they can ride from one place to another fare free. There will be a broadcast email sent that will link to a map. The consultant will be coming back on October 23^rd and there will be a public meeting on October 24^th from 4-6 p.m. They will discuss the latest on the administrative model and adjustments to service, how we can operate more efficiently and how this might be all fare free.

 

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

 

Announcements: Next month we are meeting at the multicultural research building and you can take the bus to get there.

 

Having no further business, Paul Farran moved to adjourn and Thelma Simons seconded the motion. The meeting was adjourned at 1:20 p.m.