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Attendance: Angie Claussen, Paul Farran, Ola Faucher, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Jason O’Connor, Lisa Shaw, Thelma Simons, Rick Whitmore, Phil Wilke, Maxine Younes
The meeting was called to order by President Danny Kaiser.
President: Danny Kaiser
The final report on research computing was received by the Provost and the Chancellor. They were looking for someone for a position to work with the research needs and the infrastructure. Their first search failed so they are now ready to begin again and will be looking for two positions one under Denise and one under research.
University Senate discussed evaluations with Dan Bernstein reporting on the task force for faculty evaluation. There is a new tool that is being used and will start spring 2008.
A proposal has gone through the Provost’s office and had gone to the Chancellor to recommend an amendment to the senate code and faculty rules and regulations regarding the 21 academic days to review a proposed changed. They recommendation is that this be compressed to seven days. Right now the summer session does not count as possible days in the 21 days so we have had policies and procedures implemented mid-semester.
Another proposal that is currently in the Chancellors office is regarding KU Continuing Education. The Provost has recommended that these courses be considered resident credit for students.
Secretary: Angie Claussen
We have a number of senators that have missed two meetings without being excused. According to our bylaws this is reason to replace a senator. Angie will draft an email and send to Jeannette for review. Angie will then send an email from the Unclassified Senate account reminding them that they have missed the past two meetings.
This discussion brought up that we need to include the Unclassified Senate Outlook account responsibility in the committee charges for PR.
Treasurer: Lisa Shaw
We have a balance of $3,866.50. The only outstanding bill we are aware of is the one from University Relations for the Senate photos. Paul will check into this.
Committee Reports:
Governance and Representation: Phil Wilke
The visit to Topeka went well, it was very busy and fun. There were 16 volunteers and they had scheduled meetings with 58 legislators and talked to 45-50 different lawmakers in the end. At the end of the day everyone gathered for some de-brief comments that were passed on to Kathy Dameron. There were a few questions that came up about KPERS and this was passed on to Lynn Bretz.
Bylaws changes: the election of officers to reflect protocol. We need get the wording consistent with what we do regarding electorate vs. senate giving nominations and voting. The senate will nominate for officers in March and then the electorate will vote for the officers at the same time they vote for incoming senators. This means that only current senators will be eligible to be on the executive committee so eventually everyone will have to sit out at least one year. The senators will vote for the committee chairs at the May meeting. No change to the by-laws is needed for any of this.
At the March Senate meeting we will take nominations for officers and committee chairs. We will take additional nominations in May for the committee chairs and then the 2008-2009 full senate will vote on those chairs. Outgoing senators cannot be nominated as we will not know if they are still on Senate. The vacancy that is left by the President-Elect will be filled by the new President.
We made a technical change to March in Article 8-2.
This committee continues to look at solutions from the survey. There are four committees looking at the four main areas 1. Professional Development – they are looking for opportunities for seminars with the Professional Development committee and others on campus. 2. Parking- there are three suggestions being proposed). 3. Retirement and Planning - B-school professor to do Investing 101 as an unbiased representative. They are working with Dee Steinle and Bill Beadles to do this. HR does a financial planning seminar annually in the spring so this group will try to do theirs in the fall and we will work on how to publicize this to appeal to a younger audience. The catchy subject line on email seemed to work well for the recent survey. 4. Evaluations – the email asking to participate in a follow-up survey went out on a Wednesday morning and was so successful that by 10:30 we had used up our free allotment of 100 people. We were able to buy more space so we did that and had 136 responses with 80 people leaving comments. It’s about 60/40 with people generally approving what is currently done. The researchers will take a look at the data and see where to go from there. Ola said that HREO would be happy to help with outcomes, since this is such a decentralized system Ola has been getting lots of questions. HREO serves as the tracking and repository of information and historically this has not been needed or desired but if this finding shows otherwise they would be happy to help.
Professional Development: Heidi Simon
The committee decided that having the mini-Wheat State Tour once a year was enough and that this would alternate between fall and spring. They are looking at perhaps a tour in the northeast for spring 09. The athletics tour, Watkins event and Recreation tour were all a big success this spring. Walk Kansas is the other event going on this spring and individuals are encouraged to get groups together to participate in walking the distance as if going across the state of Kansas. This begins in mid-March.
Public Relations: Thelma Simons
Thelma is working on the certificates for outgoing senators and she will need to go to the Provost to ask about trading money to purchase these. We could buy paper through Corporate Express with our current money and then print them on our own. Maxine thought that University Support Staff was able to get a gavel for the President that was engraved by going through Corporate Express so Thelma will check with Kathy Reed on this.
They are still working on revamping the web site and hope to have it up in May. The new site will include the list of past Unclassified Professional Staff Association and Unclassified Senate Presidents.
Elections: Rick Whitmore
We are doing okay on nominations, we have lots of student success people and we need more academic people. He is still waiting on some bios. The group came up with a few more names to send a nomination email.
University Support Staff: Maxine Younes
USS went to Topeka but did not feel it was a huge success. There were lots of holes in the communication. They had some confusion on funding questions. They also have talked about the tuition support for dependents and learned this is not possible because of the tax ramifications. The state statute does not allow for any dependents so this is dead in the water. Fort Hays is offering dependent tuition as a recruiting tool for faculty and Ola will find out how this is being done.
Ola mentioned that there are discussions at the Board of Regents level about Veterans Day becoming a holiday for unclassified staff. This may take five years to get the University calendar changed so it will not be in the next year or two. Those employees that are exempt would not get holiday compensation and non-exempt employees would get holiday compensation for this holiday as it stands now. They hope to make it like University Support Staff in that they all get holiday compensation time.
The Douglas County Deputy Election Committee is looking for poll workers for August and November. HREO and the Chancellors office will be sending an email to encourage people to help at the polls. This will require a vacation day and they hope to have at least 20 people interested. You can work split shifts or all day. They anticipate needing double the staff because of the huge caucus turn out this year they expect an 85% voter turn out this fall.
The Family Medical Leave Act is going to be expanding to include coverage for wounded warriors – those hurt will in the service or who have service related injuries. There will be broader coverage and HREO will be sending out info on this change.
We discussed the KPERS vesting period and how this has changed.
The life partner issue has been brought up again. Bill Crowe and Rick Levy have been talking about this issue. The Faculty Compensation committee will be rolled into University Senate to start looking at this again. The Provost has interest in this topic so he will supportive of the discussion next year. HREO will help with research or whatever is needed. No one has challenged the State Regulation that prohibits this. It’s the definition of family that seems to be creating the problem. There was a poll in the paper that shows the state is becoming more tolerant of GLBT in the workforce.
Our next full senate meeting in March 13th in the Relays Room in the Burge Union and our next executive meeting is April 17th in Alcove C.
Having no further business, Thelma Simons moved to adjourn and Paul Farran seconded the motion. The meeting adjourned at 1:20 p.m.