Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Executive Board Meeting
August 28, 2008
Alcove G, Kansas Union
Minutes transcribe by Angie Claussen
In attendance: Angie Claussen, Paul Farran, Allyson Flaster, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Mike Krings, Noelle Kurth, Jason O’Connor, Phil Wilke
Excused: Megan Gannon
The meeting was called to order at noon by President Paul Farran.
The minutes of the June 26, 2008 meeting were approved as submitted.
Reports:
President:
Paul met with the Provost along with Dennis Constance, University Support Staff Senate President. The discussion centered around budget cuts and we, as a senate, need to think about how to talk with our constituents about this topic. The Provost is still unsure what will happen as this is in the hands of the Board of Regents. He does not know for sure yet if budget cuts will be called and if they are if they will be in the area of Higher Education or not. Governor Sebelius has said that she does not want to see cuts in higher education. However, there is a $400 million deficit for FY09 in the Kansas budget. The projected numbers in the paper stated 125 positions and $5.5 million, this was the worst case scenario or losing 2% this year and 5% next year. The Provost wanted us to know that this may be less because this was the worst case scenario. Some units have already taken actions by not filling vacant positions, they are hoping not to have anyone lose a job because of these cuts. The Provost has asked for where to cut if we would get the 2% and 5% cuts so many departments are already working on this. Likely the cuts will have to come in the form of positions because of the large dollar amount needed. In the past, when there have been budget cuts, departments looked at who/what was not the most important and many of the cuts came from operating costs. This really puts us down in salary and “other operating expenditures” are still suffering. Taking it out of OOE makes it difficult for us to do our jobs. The Provost said that the timeline for knowing something officially would be sometime in November. He and the Chancellor will take the Board of Regents recommendations and proposals into account in mid-November.
The Provost also talked about how we are up 8,000 credit hours on the Lawrence campus. He said that he has never see the support anywhere like he has at KU to get everything done with housing, orientation, course sections, etc. It was astonishing the amount of work that staff put into making this work and nobody whined and complained. He had bid kudos for everyone on this whole process.
The Provost asked what he should address at the brown bag the end of September and Paul let him know that the budget cuts would be a big questions and that he should tell the staff what great work they did and how much he appreciated it this summer.
Noelle Kurth had spoken with others in research and they asked that she raise the issue that research brings in their own money but they still have to handle the budget cuts and take the hits on their salary increases and personal rewards. She also expressed concern about the GRA and GTA budgets who are getting tuition paid and salary. She has concerns that some of them are making more than unclassified staff. Jeannette Johnson and Noelle agreed that they will continue this discussion to make sure that they both have all the details and facts. Noelle expressed that this is a morale thing and so she thought that it needed to be addressed with the group. Paul asked her to come up with a way that Unclassified Senate can help the situation.
Paul reported that at the University Senate Executive committee meeting they had discussed the amendments to rules and regulations on academic misconduct. The reason for changing this rule was to have a better response time in dealing with scholarly misconduct because of federal government timetables. These came forward and the Provost recommended most but not all of the changes to the Chancellor. In the end it came down to the list of appeals and two were pretty similar so they subbed in that it had to be an appeal because it was substantially different from the misconduct.
SenEx also discussed that Student Senate has finalized a Request for Proposal for a natatorium to be added onto the recreation center. This would be a partnership with athletics for a competition pool. There was no discussion of what this would mean for Robinson at this time.
There was no word yet on the task force of employee benefits as they likely did not meet over the summer. Bill Crowe is chairing this committee.
Paul announced that we have a new Senator. Lucy McGilley who works with the SELF scholars in the School of Engineering will be the replacement for Tricia Zerger who left KU recently.
Paul has developed the Presidents working group on document repository with Rick Whitemore chairing the group. Other members include Easan Selvan, Tom Ryan, Kathy Pribbenow, and Andrew Shoemaker. They will come up with a formal proposal for our February 12th Unclassified Senate meeting including cost proposals.
Secretary: Angie Claussen reported that she is sending reminders to those Senators who miss a meeting and they have been well received.
Treasurer: Noelle Kurth reported that we have $5,762 in our account. $3,150 of this was carried forward from last year. We lost $50 in the budget cuts and were allotted $2,662 for this year. They are revamping the accounting system so she cannot see the account for the new system yet but she will be learning how to use this new system. Anticipated spending for the year include the Wheat State Whirlwind Tour as it will take a chunk of our budget with the bus costs and the Professional Development committee would like to look at having a travel fund/scholarship fund for Unclassified Staff.
Governance and Representation Committee: Phil Wilke reported that they will have their first meeting this afternoon and will go over last year and update bylaws, plan the legislative visit, do some deeper research and scheduling regarding the visit, and take a look at the action items from last year in the subcommittee reports. He has 9 members on committee. One of the things that carries over are the survey results from last spring and Susan Corrigan’s report. Phil, Paul and Susan met with Mary Ann Baker and Dennis Constance about their suggestions and what they are developing for supervisor evaluations. They have a real intensive flow chart that they have put a lot of thought and attention into. They chatted about the philosophy and how this might be adaptable to Unclassified Staff. They discussed what might the hurdles be, etc. Susan had many ideas and possible hurdles that she anticipated after the meeting. This seems like a good place to start this year when trying to adopt action items from last year. Unclassified Staff will not follow suit immediately with these evaluations but will see how it goes for University Support Staff first. They are planning to implement in a couple of departments to get started and then get feedback on how the process went. Their main concern is retaliation on either side – will one bad evaluation lead to the other one being bad (supervisor/employee). Anonymity is an issue if small department. If sexual harassment or discrimination there will need to be follow up, so lose anonymity. Major directors at the University are evaluated every 5 years so this would be totally different from that process. There is some overlap and are some similar questions on the evaluations.
Professional Development Committee: Allyson Flaster reported that their first meeting will be September 5th. They will be discussing planning for the year, professional development travel fund, web site place for professional development information, etc. They already have two events scheduled. Erin Spiridiglizozzi from CLA&S will speak on Career Mapping September 3rd and Provost Lariviere will give his annual brown bag talk on September 24th . An email went out to all Unclassified Staff with this information. We will send a reminder email a week before the Provost event. This email will need to get approval before September 15th. There will be a reminder sent to the senators about the event on September 3rd. Another idea given was perhaps a football tour when the team is traveling or for the spring semester of their new facilities.
Public Relations Committee: Mike Krings reported that he met with Allyson to work out how to publicize events. He sent out the email about the September professional development events. Mike has been making updates to the web, posting minutes, new senators, etc. The first meeting will be tomorrow to introduce each other, go over charges, redesign web and get ideas and start that ball rolling. If there is anything specific for the web that you want done let Mike know. Rebecca Mayer has a list of recommendations for changes to web so Mike will contact her to get that list. The goal is to figure out how to better organize the site and make it a better resource for Unclassified Staff. Paul sent the WSU site and he suggested that we might use that to see how another group is doing this.
Elections Committee: Megan Gannon was unable to attend so no report.
University Support Staff: Maxine Younes was unable to attend so no report.
Student Senate and Faculty Senate representatives were also unable to attend.
Unfinished Business
Jeannette Johnson is working on getting assignments finished. She is still getting names from University Support Staff. She will be working on them this week and talking to Dennis Constance and hopes to have them by the end of this week. Jeannette and/or Paul will be contacting all the people who were nominated by email to thank them for their interested and to please try again next year. This will be sent once all appointments are made.
Paul and Jeannette have been busy contacting the current representatives on all of the various committees and they have asked them to come and report to us throughout the year. They are all scheduled and on the agenda for the year. Marianne Berry, President of the University Senate will be at our next full senate meeting in September.
John Augusto and Noelle Kurth are talking about the possibility of a group through the Board of Regents for Unclassified Staff. They will draft a letter and give this to the Provost for approval. First they want to see if there is any interest from other Regents institutes. WSU is very well organized and may be interested, K-State takes their concerns to faculty senate. Jeannette will look at the email from Ola on what she found in place at the other schools. If WSU and KU are the only two schools with formal Unclassified Staff groups there may not be enough interest in pursuing this. Paul will follow up with Maxine about possible counterparts at other schools. If there is no organization in place at the other schools maybe we could just represent ourselves at the Board of Regents level. We will discuss this more at our next Unclassified Senate meeting about getting interest and writing a letter.
New Business
Jason O’Connor raised a question about how we decide how the admission criteria set by the Board of Regents are followed. Jason will talk with Danny Anderson about his questions.
Meeting was adjourned at 1:10 p.m.