Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Executive Board Meeting
April 17, 2008
Kansas Union, Alcove C
Attendance: Angie Claussen,
Paul Farran, Ola Faucher, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Jason O’Connor,
Heidi Simon, Thelma Simons, Rick Whitmore, Phil Wilke, Maxine Younes
The meeting was called to order
by President Danny Kaiser.
The minutes of the February
2008 meeting were approved as submitted.
Standing Reports:
President: Danny Kaiser
Scholarly misconduct is
moving forward. The draft is on the web site. Jeannette feels there are some
pieces regarding the draft that cause concern. The Vice Provost does not have
the ability to appoint the appropriate person to do the initial inquiry. She
will be gathering more information before the next meeting. She will send her
email to all of us.
New task force charged with
looking into employment benefits. Unclassified Senate has discussed this in
terms of partner benefits but this will be much more broad based. The question
being asked is “Are we being competitive with other places in regards to what
we offer” so, the task force will be looking at everything. One of the topics to
be researched is regarding retirees and their benefits and what we can do for
them (i.e. sick leave - could they trade in sick leave for prepaid health care
for so many months after retirement?). They will begin meeting the end of the
spring semester and will meet for the next year. Unclassified Senate will have
one representative, four faculty, a student, and a USS member. Danny did not
feel this was fair since there are more Unclassified Staff than faculty we
should have a larger representation. Danny suggested that we should be
represented with two people from each senate on the committee. There has not
yet been a chair named and they are currently asking for names. Paul would be
happy to serve on this and it would make sense for him to do this as our
president-elect/president. HREO will have an ex officio member on the
committee, so they will be represented. The task force will need to be creative
to in thinking about other ways to handle benefits, outside of the state
benefits and how things are currently being done. KBOR recommends changes so we
would have to get the University together with the other Regents schools to
make any changes to BOR benefits. There was a group hired to evaluate benefits
for the KBOR and they recommended to the state that there is no need to change
any benefits – they say they are average and all is okay. This report is
available on the Department of
Administration web site if you want to take a look. Ola will send the link to
all of us. If you think of a second name for this task force let Danny know.
What about Martha Hodgesmith?
Secretary: Angie Claussen
Nothing to report.
Treasurer: Lisa Shaw
Lisa was unable to attend,
no report.
Committee Reports
Governance and
Representation: Phil Wilke
The end of year report for
this committee was submitted and includes a legislative report, bylaw changes, and
solutions to the staff survey from a year ago. Professional development,
evaluations, parking, and retirement planning were the four areas identified by
the survey and some of the recommendations have been implemented and others
will go forward for next year. On the US web site there will be a list of
Professional Development links as a quick solution and next year will begin
work on what we can do long term. The committee did some peer institution
research regarding staff travel, development, career enhancement, etc. There was
never a report on how much is spent University-wide on professional
development. Diane Goddard and Richard McKinney and Jeanne Rooney were in on
the meeting and Danny will follow up with them on this report. Evaluations
– merit raise email was sent with the link to the survey about merit
evaluations and Susan Corrigan has all the raw data and is parsing out numbers
from there. Parking, there are a few recommendations to take to the parking
committee. Retirement – we are planning an investing and financial
planning 101, by a b-school professor in the fall semester. Ola will draft a
statement on the HREO stance on professional development. The next action for
the committee is how to turn these bullet points into actions.
Legislative lobbying
requires taking a day of leave to go and promote the University. This committee
wanted to see about getting the policy changed for future visits. Ola said that
historically this had been done because it took a commitment on the individuals
part to do this not just for self interest. This could be looked at and
addressed in the future. If there is an administrative okay for the messages
being sent at the visit then this might be justification for not taking a day
of vacation. It does make an impression on the legislators that we are willing
to take a vacation day to come and talk to them. US would need to make a
decision on our stance of the issue and then Ola could try and move it forward.
An issue to raise with the
Provost is that when a unit has an event they must use Union vendors and caterers.
There are times when it would be more beneficial financially to go outside of
the Union to do this. Are we a good steward of the money if we spend more to go
with the Union? There are exceptions to this - if you are off campus you do not have to use the Union and
you can also complete an exception form in the Provost’s office.
Thelma will get the web
additions done.
Professional Development:
Heidi Simon
The committee report has a
list of events and some recommendations for future events especially the Wheat
State Tour event. One thing for the future in this committee is a way to get KU
involved with the Kansas City Corporate Challenge. It was not possible for this
year but the committee would like to do this in the future. The event includes
lots of different health events i.e. swimming, biking, chess, running, tennis,
etc. and each event has certain days they happen in the KC area over several
months. This does require a fee and the Med Center has participated in this and
so this committee would like to do research into how this might happen for
2009. Ola will do some research on the Med Center participation. Some of the benefits
of doing this are the camaraderie, team building, health and wellness,
represent KU, interact with other
teams, events are in Lawrence and in Kansas City, only a couple of day
commitment.
The committee will continue
to find out what professional development means to KU employees and what can we
do to meet people’s needs. Ola would be happy to have HREO meet with US to talk
about developing an event or doing something locally. KUCE are doing soft
skill, mid-management type classes to do short courses. Conflict resolution,
etc. they have a core of information and they could speak with a larger group
on a specific topic. HREO could also do this type of event. Ola will get a
philosophical statement from the provost on professional development.
Public Relations: Thelma
Simons
This committee was involved
in email communications and helping edit, draft, and send messages for the rest
of the committee. Mike Krings gets information into the Oread. Web site has
been a challenge as far as a schedule and volunteers. Paul has asked that the
web be up and going before Thelma turns this over in May on the 14th. The certificates are ready to go for
our joint meeting for outgoing senators. We can’t buy the folders for the
awards or have them printed at Kinko’s with the money that we have. We can buy
paper and then print them on a color printer. Lindy will trade money to have
food at our end of the year meeting and Jeannette will talk to Lindy about
trading state money for endowment money for the certificates and folders. State
money cannot be used for awards. Thelma will talk to Kathy about purchasing the
paper so they can be given on May 14th. A gavel could be ordered and
engraved for the President per Maxine from Kathy Reed. The reports will be
posted on the web site. The charges for next year’s committees will come up at
the May meeting and be worked on for the next year.
Elections: Rick Whitmore
Elections – we have a
slate of senators and just need to make sure the process is documented for the
next year. This is the first time the census has been done and we need to
define how this all happens so that we can survive turnover.
In our bylaws, or otherwise,
we need to lay out some official processes i.e. request from “Chair of
Elections committee” not from “Rick Whitmore”.
We had a huge number of
declines this year and the committee is wondering what happened so that we had
such a huge decline rate. In the past Jeannette has emailed all employee of the
month winners and asked them if they would be interested. Perhaps we need to
consider recruitment versus random nominations. Let them know that they would
be a good candidate and that they could contribute etc.
We added four seats to the
Senate this year – we will need to discuss at what point the senate gets
too large.
We will have a student
success person in an academic position because of an error on the ballot.
Christine Faucher has resigned her seat so Jaime Kramer will fulfill this one
year unexpired term. W
We do not have a process for
certifying the votes and that is okay. Phil will resend the email with the
changes and we will use that to post on the web site.
University Support Staff:
Maxine Younes
They held elections and Denise
Constance will be the president and they did committee reports. They have
trouble deciding which direction to go with the issues. One of them was to have
more lactation rooms in the building and they struggle with how to make this
actually happen.
KPERS vesting after five
years discussion – Ola will find out if it passed and send an email.
Unfinished Business: none
New Business:
Agenda for transition
meeting – Paul and Danny will talk in detail.
This is actually two
meetings as we start with the last meeting of this year and close it and then
we open the next meeting with the incoming senate. At the outgoing meeting
Danny will ask the chairs to do a brief report and highlight what was done and
any recommendations they have for next year. At that portion of the meeting we
will also solicit membership for the committees and elect a Secretary for next
year.
In the new meeting we will elect
chairs of the committees and talk about the Beth Warner meeting about Zythos. Jeannette,
Thelma and Paul talked to her about this and would need to get license fees to
initiate this. Right now it is an $80 fee per license. Jeannette asked Lindy
why each unit needs to pay this if this is something that the University is
behind. This looks like a great product and would serve our group well. Beth is
working on access for people and will give Paul a temporary work space to do a
practice on how our folders would be set up etc. This is where we would house
info to be passed on from one group to the next. Will have info ready to pass
along in May to new chairs. We
will also take the new senate photos in May.
Having no further business,
Rick Whitmore moved to adjourn and Paul Farran seconded the motion. The meeting
adjourned at 1:27 p.m.