University of Kansas
2008-09 Unclassified Senate Meeting
July 10, 2008 1 p.m.
106 Spooner Hall
Minutes transcribed by Angie Claussen
In Attendance: John Augusto, Debbie Baker, Claudia Bode, Diann
Burright, Angie Claussen, Chris Claussen, Dan Coonfield, Paul Farran, Megan
Gannon, Frederic Gutknecht IV, Gail James, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Teresa
Kopsa, Jamie Kramer, Mike Krings, Noelle Kurth, Paul Liechti, Amanda Ostreko, Mark
Pacey, Kathy Pribbenow, Aaron Quisenberry, Easan Selvan, Andrew Shoemaker,
Heidi Simon, Xinkun Wang, Rick Whitmore, Phil Wilke, Maxine Younes
Excused: Abby Coffin, Susan Corrigan, Allyson Flaster, Ed
Foley, Angie Loving, Susan Mercer, Denise Modin, Jason OÕConnor, Mary Ann
Rasnak, Tom Ryan, Lisa Shaw, Carolyn Thompson, Tricia Zerger
Absent: Audrey Coleman, Rebecca Mayer,
Michael Stolze talked to us
about The Commons before we began our meeting. Information on this can be found
at: http://www.thecommons.ku.edu/contact.html
The meeting was called to
order at noon by President Paul Farran
The minutes of both of the
May 15, 2008 meetings were approved as amended.
Reports:
President: Paul thanked everyone for being here today.
Secretary: Angie read the names of those excused for the day
and reminded everyone to let her know if they would be missing a meeting.
Treasurer: Noelle reported that we have a balance of $3,100.
53 and we should be getting our
2009 money of $2, 662.00 which will give us $5,800.00 to spend this year. There
may be some changes in our 2009 budget with Governor SebeliusÕs call for budget
reductions.
Governance and
Representation: Phil reported that
he received his volunteer list from Mike Krings and will be contacting them
about setting up a meeting. They will start planning the legislative visit very
soon and will continue to work on the action items from the surveys and
projects that were started last year. Once they have the results of the survey
on employee evaluations they will post the results summaries on the web. There
will then be an email sent to all Unclassified Staff with a link to the results
and asking for any feedback for
action items for unclassified senate. He would like about a dozen on the
committee. Meetings will happen once a month with some subcommittee meetings as
needed.
Professional Development: Heidi Simon reported for Allyson that they had met
yesterday and passed along the information on the committee. The date for
Provost brown bag and deciding what to do with Wheat State Whirlwind tour with
be the first priorities. The new person who will be the events coordinator will
be on board in a couple weeks. Allyson does not have the list yet of people on
the committee. There will also be a subgroup of this committee that is working
on getting involved in the KC Corporate challenge this year.
Public Relations: Mike reported that Thelma completed the web update
with itÕs new look so be sure to check it out. The photos from the previous
meeting will be updated on the web very soon. Mike had worked with Paul and Ed
on the volunteers sheet that went out to all the chairs. The committee will plan
to meet every month or every six weeks. Angie will send the approved minutes to
Mike to get everything up to date on the web.
Elections: Megan thanked those members that volunteered for
her committee. This group is usually busier in the spring but this year she
would like to see this committee help coordinate surveys and hopes to meet at
the end of the month to start discussing this. They will meet as needed as most
can be done via email. There will probably be more frequent meetings in the
spring.
University Support Staff: Maxine reported on the updated information to supervisor
evaluations – Ola brought up some ideas/issues that had not been
considered i.e. sexual harassment, discrimination, etc. These things would have
to be investigated so they would not remain anonymous. It was suggested that
Dennis talk to us as a group about the spring supervisory evaluations that
University Support Staff created. The group will be doing a retreat July 24th
so they set the agenda for that day. They are also planning to do a mini-wheat
state tour and volunteering for the upcoming state fair. Phil will have Susan
get in touch with Dennis about the evaluations.
Student Senate: Mark reported that he will be our representative
for the year from Student Senate. They are working on distributing funds and
redoing things that had been started. They are also in the process of moving
KJHK from Òthe ShackÓ to the KS Union.
Faculty Senate: Nancy is still working on getting us a
representative so there was no report today.
Human Resources: Paul let us know that Ola Faucher will be at our
meetings but she is really here just to answer any questions not to report to
the group.
Unfinished Business
We need a volunteer to
attend the University Support Staff meetings. Theresa Kopsa volunteered to do
this for the year.
Task force proposals: Paul
Farran would like to see a variety of projects done this year and wondered if
developing a task force for each of them would be the best way to do this. The
executive committee recommended that we roll them into charges for the current
committees.
Web site overhaul –
roll into the PR charge as a new charge not an ongoing charge. No specific
things yet to do but Mike will have a subgroup that will work on specific
objectives for the web site. A completion date of February 12th has
been set for this group. Mike will need to look at the committee and see if the
group includes the appropriate people and then ask for some additional
volunteers if needed. Paul has nominated a few people who did not volunteer initially
to see if they would be willing to help. There is no anticipated budget
allocation needed for this charge.
Bylaw review: We need to
have our bylaws reflect what we do, take out the extras, update the current,
etc. We just need a general overhaul of what we do and a group to look at what
other governance groups at KU and at other Kansas schools do to see if they
have components in their bylaws we donÕt have right now. Phil has volunteered
to roll this into the Governance and Representation committee as it is
currently a standard charge. November 13th is the deadline to have a
draft to start discussions as a big group.
Annual surveys: Two years
ago the Senate surveyed all unclassified staff and where they were from on
campus. We were not able to tie the information to the demographic data at that
time and then we did an unofficial survey this past year where anyone could
have participated. Paul would like to work with OIRP and the elections
committee to have surveys be centrally managed so they could be tracked,
monitored and more official. All of the committees will work with the elections
committee to help them if they have a survey they would like to conduct. The surveys
would need to come out of the committee written and then elections would be the
ones to get it set up. The goal of the past survey was to see Òwho we areÓ and
what unclassified staff would like to have done for them through Unclassified
Senate. If this is something the group would like to do again let Paul know or
bring it up in new business.
Document repository: Paul
would like to have an electronic place where every piece of paper can be kept. Xythos
is currently being used on campus and Beth from the ProvostÕs office has been
invited to come to give us a presentation at one of our next meetings. There
will be a cost to do this so we will need to consider that when looking into
Xythos. This may also be fairly time consuming to get all of the documents
scanned. Xythos not going as easily or doing all they said it would according
to Kathy Prebbenow, Theresa Kopsa and Jeannette Johnson. They cautioned that this
may not be the answer to everything as there is some disappointment across
campus. Jeannette suggested that the reported cost would need to be discussed
more with the financial stream – not sure that an organization should be
docked for those services. Needs to be an institutional policy set by someone
besides us on who gets charged what. Perhaps Kathy Reed and Molly Mulloy should
be brought into the group when we discuss this option. Another option would be
a space on our web site where you log into the system to view documents but this
may require a big cost. Kathy suggested that her office could train and then we
would not have to go through web services. It was volunteered that Tom Ryan
could do this pretty easily. The purpose of this is that we want to be able to
track history and would not just be for policy. Xythos has a whole realm of
other functions so this would just be the tip of the capabilities. Paul wanted
us to be team players and use this since it is currently on campus but he is open
to other ideas. Shared drives will not work because not everyone uses Novell
and there is not a central way to do this. Paul is thinking a task force to
answer some of these questions might be best. They could gather data and bring
it back to the group with recommendations.
We do not have in our bylaws
a way to make a Task Force so we can discuss this. John Augusto proposed a PresidentÕs
work group on information repository. The group agreed this would be a good way
to handle this. Paul will find a committee chairperson and then recruit
committee members to have a one semester time frame to gather information. The
work group should have a list of recommendations to report back on Dec 11th
at our meeting. This was approved unanimously. Paul will find a chair –
Rick Whitmore perhaps and will look for committee volunteers.
Reports from volunteers on
University and Governance committees: Angie Claussen suggested that we need
some kind of reporting mechanism for those people that Unclassified Senate
appoints to outside committees. Jeannette Johnson will get a coordinated effort
going. In past years we have had the representatives come and report
periodically during the semester. The group agreed that we should probably try
to get each appointed committee member to report to us at least once during the
semester. In the past have said these things in our meetings but perhaps they would
not need to be invited and could email a report to be read at our meetings. Perhaps
we could break them up and have a few reports at each meeting. Another idea was
that the individuals could send a summary report to the secretary to share
during her monthly meeting report.
Another option would be to add standing reports to the agenda. Jeannette
and Paul will discuss and see which committees we need to have report back to
us as some are of higher interest and some we may not need to hear back from
them as often. Most of the committees will not have much to report until September or October. Some
examples of reporting are that Parking always has an open forum and this is a
good chance to voice an opinion to parking publicly.
Committee Assignments:
Jeannette Johnson is seeking involvement in various governance, Senate and
University committees. After the second request for nominations and volunteers
we received more interest. She received some feedback that after the
nominations are made the person who is selected is notified but we do not let
the others that volunteered know that they were not selected. It was agreed
that we would start sending volunteers a notification regardless of whether or
not they are selected. Those that are not selected may not be because of
needing broad representation or because there were a large number of volunteers.
The email should let them know we are sorry they were not selected, a reason
why, ask them to apply again and ask them if they would be interested in being
on one of our committees this year. We should encourage them that next year
there will be other openings so please submit your name again if you are still
interested. Some other input
received was that there is a Ògood old boysÓ club and that the same people
always serve on these committees so we need to be sure that we have broad
representation as well. Some of
the committee appointments are one-year and some are three-year rotations and employee
recognition is a four-year rotation. There does seem to be a tendency to go
with those people that are known by members of the Senate. Jeannette will have
this years appointments completed by the time school starts. May have been one
committee not included – disciplinary action committee for USS but she is
not sure if there are openings. Sometimes there is holdover if they did not have
any hearings during the term.
New Business
Easan Selvan suggested that
Unclassified Senate sponsor a blood drive on campus. During the recent flooding
the blood shortage in Iowa he thought this might be a good idea to show good
will on our behalf and the University of Kansas behalf. Red Cross does most of
the work so we would just need small committee to get this going. The concern
that came from the group is that there are already a couple of blood drives
that happen on campus and in Lawrence. There is a student group that does one
in the late fall but there isnÕt one this time of year. It was suggested that perhaps
we put our support behind the student drive rather than do our own. Danny and
Quiz confirmed that the blood drives would have to go through the events
committee and that way we could get an idea of the calendar. Since we only have
one or two a year we would just want to make sure that ours is not in the same
month or semester. It was proposed that we should look and see when they are scheduled
currently and if there is a need for another we could do one. Quiz will find
out dates and Easan will work with him to bring back information to our September
meeting. It was also mentioned that Community Blood Drives comes to Lawrence
every 50-60 days and is down on 10th and Kentucky so would want to
see what the local community is doing not just the KU community. There is a walk
in option in Lawrence with the Community Blood Center – the blood stays
here vs. Red Cross goes wherever needed. Easan will look into all these
opportunities.
BOR Classified and Support
Staff council: Jeannette Johnson was reading the Board of Regents minutes that come
to her and at the March meeting she discovered the BOR approved a Classified
and Support Staff council which will meet on a periodic basis. There is a
faculty senate president council and a staff president council which leaves unclassified
staff as the only group that will not have a Regents group. Jeanette did some
investigation to see what other BOR schools have a similar Unclassified Senate
group and WSU is the only school with a comparable organized unclassified
group. We probably have a ways to go before we get any BOR recognition but
Jeannette was curious how we would even get in touch with interested folks at
other institutions. Do we get to know people at other Universities in the state
in our own disciplines? Maxine Younes could find out from USS presidents if
there are unclassified groups on their campuses. Does anyone have colleagues at
other universities that would know this? Maxine could do this. Graduate Deans
from WSU, KSU and KU meet every fall. Jeannette could ask Ola who her
counterparts are at these schools. And others could ask colleagues. Unclassified
staff are growing faster here than other groups and the guess is that this is
true at other schools as well. We should find out if these other groups exist
and then find out if there is interest in facilitating a meeting of the groups
at the BOR level. Would a letter to the BOR make sense? Paul could send an
email to Associate BOR saying that Unclassified Senate here is organized and
active and we know that xyz schools have these groups and we would be
interested in a similar council for our group. Paul would need to discuss this
idea with the Provost and
Chancellor but the BOR think we seem sort of mysterious and donÕt really know
what we do – know we have USS, faculty and students. They all have jobs
they can understand they do not get unclassified staff. Paul could bring this up
with the Provost at his one on one meetings. John Augusto will send a draft of an
email to Paul, Maxine will talk to her counterparts and Jeannette check with
Ola and everyone will report back in September.
The results of the survey on
evaluations will be circulated to everyone soon. There was an email exchange
after the survey regarding dedicating a brown bag to have Ola from HR come talk
to us about the evaluation process and this idea will be passed along to
Allyson. The survey had a 20% response rate which is very high so it is clear
that this was an important topic. There are a number of people that get very
general feedback from their staff evaluations and there is not much goal
setting etc. that is happening. Ola and her staff might be able to provide us with some
useful information on how we as a group and individuals might learn more about
this. Heidi will have Allyson get in touch with Susan Corrigan about the
results of survey to ask Ola to come and speak to the group.
Announcements
KS public radio event at
Lied Center Tuesday night. Phil encouraged everyone to attend.
Phil is coordinating state
fair representatives for Sept 2-14.
The meeting was adjourned at
1:15 p.m.