Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Meeting
Thursday, March 8, 2007

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

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

1. Approval of the December 2006 and January 2007 minutes.
1. Jeannette Johnson moved to accept the minutes and Rick Whitmore seconded the motion.
2. The minutes were approved as submitted.

1. Standing Reports:

• President: Jason O'Connor

• i. The athletic committee of SenEx is taking on a new structure and new charges in response to the review of the past year. Ann Cudd is the new chair and wants to give the committee more power and incorporate all faculty, staff and students. Since faculty and staff help athletics (i.e. facilities and operations, parking, NCAA certifications, etc.) they would like to have the committee to have representation from across campus. Athletics will use this committee to hear how they are doing and how they have an impact on campus.

• ii. KU Continuing Education spoke to SenEx about how they are considered out of residence in the last 30 hours for a KU student. They made a proposal to be voted on next month that their undergraduate courses be counted as resident credit. They are concerned why they are not treated like KU courses if taught by KU faculty. Jeannette said that KUCE courses do not count toward the required six hours of enrollment for GTA's because they are not semester based.

• iii. CUSA is looking at the course repeat policy for the College. Right now, there is a deadline by which students must fill out paperwork in order to have this applied to thethe course they are retaking. CUSA has rewritten this to be an automatic process. The rule of having a D or F when first taking the course will still stand as will the rule that if the D or F grade was received because of misconduct they will not be able to use this policy to replace their grade. Each student will have the chance to use this in five courses that are at the 0-299 level. Junior/Senior level courses will not be allowed to use this policy. CUSA is working with AP&P on coming up with a name that better reflects what the policy does as students are confused by the title of “repeat policy”.

• iv. The textbook task force has completed their task and Hannah and Bob will have flyers out encouraging faculty to order books earlier to save some money. The average shelf life of a book is three years. After six terms, it is considered dead and goes to recycle.

• v. Jason serves on the Planning and Resources committee and they presented to SenEx the six items that they felt were most important. They included deferred maintenance, faculty/staff compensation, student demographics, program development, physical space management and planning the 150 th anniversary in 2016. Many of the issues they do not feel they have the expertise with which to move forward.

• vi. Last year he retirees rights and benefits committee developed a retirees handbook. Jeannette has worked with various offices to update the information in the handbook and it is now at the next level for review.

• vii. SenEx and University Senate were very interested in our mini Wheat State tour and what we will be doing on May 9 th .

2. Treasurer: Angie Loving reported that we have a balance of $2,755.35 and we have a bill for $610 for the mini Wheat State tour bus on May 9 th , which will bring our balance to $2, 145. 35. There will also be a $500 bill coming for the public radio/ volunteer event on April 18 th for the musicians, a bill for $185 for the brochures and we may have a bill from University Relations for $15. Angie will request that we be able to roll our balance forward for next year.

• University Support Staff: Maxine Younes reported that their executive board met yesterday. USS has not made legislative trips to Topeka sincethe USS was established and they have not heard back from the University on how to help with other' visits. They are talking of trying to go on their own next year so they will be asking us to see if it would be appropriate to go on the same day. They also discussed the current Senate bill that may affect their vacation time. Right now, it is still in the discussion stage but this would affect the way that they accrue vacation and what the max accrual would be for vacation. The bill was vague and there has not been a defined purpose behind it. USS is also still working on evaluations and how to get merit increases more evenly applied across campus. They would like to see the way that ranking is done be more accurate and have merit applied equitably across all areas.
  
• Student Senate: Hannah Love was unable to attend so no report. Jason reported that they are discussing the issue of disability buses and the need for more buses to accommodate those with a disability. KU on Wheels buses are not accessible and need to be replaced.

• Human Resources: Ola Faucher was unable to attend as she was at a conference on campus.

3. Committee Reports:

• Legislative: Paul reported that the legislative visit to Topeka went well and they had a good showing despite the snow. The UDK and the Oread both covered the visit and had good articles. He also reported that the survey results are posted. We will look into getting a tracker on the site because there were only two people that sent email with further information. The first email concerned the ice- covered lots and what we could do to help him and the other was in regards to working to ask the Provost for additional tuition assistance. Paul passed the first concern to parking and is going to talk with HREO about the current number of participants in the tuition program. He also asked if anyone had ideas on the next steps to go forward. Should we pick three or four of these to work on? Should we use these to write charges for next year? Should the executive committee address what to do this year and what to wait on for next year? Paul will send out the list and we should each pick our top five and email him. This committee is really called Legislative not Governance and Representation so we need to be sure that our agendas and minutes reflect this.

• Public Relations: Thelma Simons reported that there are lots of new fliers and to let her know if you need some. The committee will be meeting in the next couple of weeks to start working on revamping the web site for Unclassified Senate. If you have any web site updates please send them to Thelma. Robin Bedenbaugh is drafting a way to give the web more pizzazz. Mike Kring would like to do a story on the Wheat State mini tour for the Oread.

• Professional Development: John Augusto reported that April 18 th will be the open house at KPR/Audio Reader and May 1 st will be the Kansas Fire and Rescue event. He will send a reminder about these two events in late March. May 9 th will be the mini Wheat State Tour and there will be a first come first serve online application for this event. The $650 bus fee has been taken care of already and they will leave from the Visitors Center parking lot. Don Steeples will be joining the group and Margey is excited to get pie from the Hays House. There will be a story about who is going in the Oread and then information will go out via email regarding the event. The hope is that some unclassified staff will be able to gain an appreciation for Kansas and to learn about happenings all over Kansas . John also reported that his committee would be starting a list of activities to focus on for next year.

• Elections (ad-hoc): Rick Whitmore reported that he has had eight nominations, three of those have been accepted, and three were self-nominations so he just has two that he has not heard back from. There will be a second notification going out on March 12 th asking for nominations. We have 10 total open seats (four academic openings and we have two nominations, one administrative opening and we have no nominations, one information services opening and we have one opening, three research openings and we have two nominations, and we have one student success opening and three nominations). Get your nominations in to Rick.

4. Old Business:

• By-laws will be voted on at our next Unclassified Senate meeting. We need to encourage attendance at the next meeting so that we have enough people present to vote. There will be no other presentations so we should have plenty of time to walk through all the changes. The executive committee voted and approved to remove the gender identity change that was initially included in the changes. Paul moved to accept all other changes and Angie Loving seconded the motion. Before our April 12 th meeting we will email these proposed changes so that all members can bring their ideas and we can discuss them. The committee agreed that we would only discuss these current recommendations and if there were any others, they would need to be brought up at a later time. The entire unclassified staff will be able to vote article by article online in April.

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

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