Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Meeting
September 20, 2007
Continuing Education Conference Room

University of Kansas

2007 Unclassified Senate Meeting

September 20, 2007 12:00 noon

Continuing Education Conference Room

Minutes transcribed by Angie Claussen

 

Attendance: Beth Baca, Angie Claussen, Abby Coffin, Audrey Coleman, Dan Consolver, Ronda Consolver, Paul Farran, Allyson Flaster, Ed Foley, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Mike Krings, Paul Liechti, Rebecca Mayer, Jason O’Connor, Kathy Pribbenow, Aaron Quisenberry, Lisa Shaw, Kathy Sheldon, Heidi Simon, Thelma Simons, Carolyn Thurman, Xinkun Wang, Rick Whitmore, Phil Wilke, Maxine Younes.

 

• The meeting was called to order at noon by President Danny Kaiser.

 

Guest Presentation:

Jim Peters, Director of Marketing and Development for Continuing Education welcomed us to the building and provided us some information about KUCE. Continuing Education has a broad range of services provided. They include five offices, the main facility in Lawrence, KU Medical Center, KU Edwards Campus, the Public Management Center in Topeka and the Law Enforcement Center in Hutchinson. Most of their programs are non-credit and involve professional development, medical continuing education, fire and rescue, and the largest program: aerospace engineering. They do have some credit courses that count toward a degree. KUCE has 140 employees and is the primary outreach arm for the University with offerings all over the world. Many courses are offered on site, such as their 37 week on site engineering management program with Black and Veatch that is broadcast to Houston and Ann Arbor. They also do academic conferences and help with event management (i.e. registration, materials, etc.) Fire and Rescue is in Lawrence and they have a mobile fire and rescue training academy. They worked with 680 fire departments across Kansas last year and over 8,000 people. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is another way that they reach out to the entire state. They help put on leadership events such as Girls State and the Black Leadership Symposium. At the KU Edwards Campus they do academic outreach and in Topeka they offer management training for public employees through a certificate or masters in public management. In Hutchinson they have an emergency vehicle training course that 426 police departments utilize. They offer a 14 week residential course at this location and you can take a tour of the facility if you are in Hutchinson.

 

Danny thanked Jim Peters and then requested we go around the room and introduce ourselves as a group to get the meeting started.

• The minutes of the June 14, 2007 meeting were approved as submitted.

• Reports
  
  President: Danny Kaiser:
  The charges to the four standing committees of Unclassified Senate were developed by the Executive Committee and distributed to the Chairs. Please review your copy and if you have any feedback let Danny know.
  We had a number of volunteers for committees and we have had the following people appointed:
  
  University Governance Committees, Boards, and Task Forces:
  University Senate Organization and Administration Committee: Kathy Pribbenow
  University Senate Athletic Committee: Frank DeSalvo
  University Task Force on Research Computing: Rebecca Ryan and Elise Waldron
  Task Force on Scholarly Misconduct: John Augusto

1.    University Committees and Boards:
Parking Commission: Andrew Shoemaker
Transit Commission: Aaron Quisenberry
Judicial Board: yet to be finalized
Library Appeals Board: yet to be finalized
Employee Recognition: yet to be finalized

2.    Unclassified Senate had a one year unexpired term seat to be filled for a member of the Executive Committee. Dan Consolver has agreed to fill that seat for the year.

• SenEx is off to a very good start this year. Bill Crowe is very concerned about inclusiveness of all the constituent Senates and is trying to set a tone that will hopefully continue long into the future. We have one vote on SenEx, and our representative is our past president, Jason O’Connor. Danny also attends these meetings as an ex-officio member.
• Student Senate has requested a review of the University Senate decision regarding the credit/no credit policy. This has been referred to Academic Procedures and Policies (AP&P).
• SenEx adopted a technical revision to USRR 2.9 regarding exceptions to University policies, making the hearing of exceptions more streamlined and congruent with the original intent of last year’s legislation. This will allow students who are physically or psychologically unable to represent themselves to be represented by another person acting on their behalf. Students who are able to represent themselves will be required to do so.
• A question was asked to clarify what makes up University Senate. Unclassified Senate has three members – past president (Jason O’Connor), president (Danny Kaiser) and Jeannette Johnson. University Support Staff has three members, Student Senate has 11-12 members and Faculty Senate has 20-30 members. SenEx is then the Executive Committee of University Senate.
• The Oread has a new column entitled “Governance Matters”. This is meant to give all four senates a chance to highlight major issues, accomplishments or actions of their group. So far the topic of KU Continuing Education as resident or non-resident credit and promotion and tenure have been featured. As a group we came up with two ideas for Unclassified Senate to submit, our by-law changes that were passed last spring and our survey results.
• SenEx met with the Board of Regents on September 18^th. Discussion items included the BOR requirements regarding the University calendar, International Programs, deferred maintenance, budget and admissions. As far as the calendar item KU has asked for flexibility in the 75 days in two semesters that are currently required. The University would like to vary this  so that we might offer short courses, not start on an odd Friday, etc. Maxine Younes wondered if this would have any impact on salaries and Jeannette Johnson commented that this would not have an impact on salaries because courses would still meet for the same number of hours. The impact might be seen more in the length of finals week as smaller schools may not need a full week for exams.

Secretary: Angie Claussen had no report.

Treasurer: Lisa Shaw reported that we have a total balance of $4,507.00. $1,845 was carried forward in 099 funds, these funds can be used for travel. We also received our new allocation of $2,662.00 this is money to be used to conduct business.

Governance and Representation: Phil Wilke reported that the committee had their first meeting and it was a lively and well informed bunch. They are working on ways to implement solutions regarding the survey results. They will have a handful of solutions by the end of the year. Their next meeting will be in two weeks.

Professional Development: Heidi Simon reported that the committee had met and come up with a full schedule. This fall the theme is “Behind the Scenes at KU” and will include the following events:
September 26^th will be a tour of the University Theatre from 11:30-12:30 with an opportunity to see the costumes and lighting for Translations and have a chance to win tickets to the performance.
October 2^nd is a brown bag lunch with Provost Lariviere in the Big XII room in the Kansas Union at noon. He will spend 30 minutes talking to us and then will have an open question and answer session. Heidi asked if there were any ideas for topics we would like him to cover and the following were suggested:

Advising – tools to be used and the committee to evaluate advising
Unclassified Senate – charges that he has for us (the group decided we should wait a year to ask about this)
Admissions Standards
Enrollment – declining or staying level
Differential tuition
Tuition for staff and dependents – more than one class per semester for employees or hand off to dependent (the group decided we would need HR in order to bring up this topic)

October 11^th will be the 2^nd Mini Wheat State Tour from 8:00-5:00. This time the group will be going to southeast Kansas and looking at the civil war history. There will be room for 42 people and it will cost $12 per person. The web site will be up within the next week so those whom are interested can sign up. This will be on a first come first serve basis.
November - working on an event with the Natural History Museum
December – working on an event with athletics

The spring semester will have a “Wellness” theme and may include events in February with Watkins Health Center, March with the Recreation Center and Walk Across Kansas, April with CPR training and the Kansas City Corporate Challenge.

Next year they have talked about doing a theme of community service and offering tours of the KU Medical Center and the KU Edwards Campus.

There will be an email coming soon about the Provost brown bag and then there will be a flyer at the Provost’s talk about the other events for the semester.

Public Relations: Thelma Simons reported that the group met two weeks ago and reviewed the charges they have been given. We still have 800 brochures so this will not need to be updated this year. The committee will be promoting the events that professional development has planned and will be updating the web site with the new look. This new site will make it easy to post photos so we will need photos from every event.

Elections: Rick Whitmore reported that this is a census year so he will have a report for the group at our November 15^th meeting on changes to the unclassified staff population and any changes then to the Senate seats.

University Support Staff: Maxine Younes reported that they reviewed committee reports from the previous year and then broke into committees and formalized charges. They are still working on the supervisory evaluations and have received lots of varied feedback on doing this.

• New Business

Phil Wilke proposed a by-law change to correct wording in Article VII Section 4 Duties and Privileges. Currently it reads: The Senate Executive Council shall ensure that all functions of the Senate are carried out expeditiously and in accordance with the provisions of this Code. It shall arrange for and call meetings of the Senate. It shall act as the elections committee and verify they results of each Senate election. The Executive Council shall appoint unclassified professional staff to university and governance committees. The proposed change reads: The Senate Executive Council shall ensure that all functions of the Senate are carried out expeditiously and in accordance with the provisions of this Code. It shall arrange for and call meetings of the Senate. The Executive Council shall advise the president on appointments of unclassified staff members to university and governance committees. The rationale for this change comes from the fact that Unclassified Senate Executive Council no longer certifies elections, this is done by the elections committee. The Unclassified Senate Executive Council does not appoint members to governance boards, rather we forward names to the Provost and other entities for final approval and appointment. This would bring the Unclassified Senate wording in line with other KU governance bodies.  It was moved, and seconded, that we table a vote until November.

Rick Whitmore proposed the idea of having a University subscription to Safari O’Reilly.  This would be beneficial for IT staff and others to have online access to their catalog of books. The group recommended that Rick bring this up with the libraries.

• Unfinished Business
  Dan Consolver asked if the new by-law changes had been posted to the web site since they all passed in the spring. Thelma will make sure that the web has the new version and a statement that all changes were passed. 

• Announcements:
  October is cyber-security awareness month so be sure to check out the web site www.beseKUre.edu and look for the ads in the Sex on the Hill edition. There was a flier passed out about the workshops being offered and we were asked to hang these in our offices.
  Our next meeting is November 15^th in the Centennial Room of the Kansas Union.

 Having no further business the meeting was adjourned at 1:20 p.m.