Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Executive Board Meeting
June 26, 2008
Kansas Union, Alcove G
Attendance: Paul Farran, Ian Cahir, Susan Corrigan, Megan Gannon, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Mike Krings, Noelle Kurth, Thelma Simmons, Rick Whitmore, Phil Wilke, Maxine Younes
President Paul Farran called the meeting to order.
The minutes of the April 2008 meeting were approved as submitted, with the correction of one typographical error.
Standing Reports
President: Paul Farran
Senate is still looking for nominations for university-wide committees and extension of the deadlines for these nominations was discussed as not as many people are stepping up as anticipated or needed. Paul said we could address this a little later in the meeting.
Paul also said he had several new ideas for Tasks Forces that he would bring up under New Business.
Paul also asked us about student and faculty representation in our meetings. He hadn’t heard from the student representative, only the Student Senate president who told him who would be at our meeting, but was not. He hoped that we’d see Mark Pacey, the student rep, in the future. As far as faculty they had never send someone to one of our meetings before and Paul inquired whether we thought it was worth it to keep asking them. It was discussed and decided that it was worth the effort to keep inviting them to attend, it was their choice to send someone. Paul said he would talk to Nancy Kinnersley, the Faculty Senate president, again about this. Maxine said they hadn’t had a faculty member attend their meetings either.
Paul then chose to skip to New Business temporarily as two Senators came to the meeting to share the results from the on-line survey on Evaluation of Unclassified Staff.
Skipping ahead temporarily to New Business
Findings from the Survey on Performance Evaluation
Susan Corrigan and Ian Cahir joined the meeting to share the findings from the survey that was conducted. Phil Wilke gave a short background of the survey that was conducted to find out if performance evaluations were being conducted and if unclassified staff were satisfied with the process used in their departments. Susan and Ian produced and shared a document of the findings from the 4 question survey that includes quantitative data and some selected quotes from staff members. They said the response rate for such a survey (done on survey monkey) was good, in fact they we ended up having to pay for the service because there were over 100 responses. They shared that a majority of survey respondents said they were getting evaluations, however the nature and scope of the evaluations varied greatly. Everything from a 3 second “good job” type evaluation to formal written evaluations was reported. Also, on the open-ended survey questions the majority of the responses fell to the very positive or very negative end of the spectrum – a typical response pattern to these types of questions. Susan shared that the topic must be an important one in the forefront of staff minds’ because it was obvious from responses that people put a lot of effort and thought into their responses. Jeannette also said it shows the Senate is conducting activities and focusing an effort on something that is important and in line with what should be done. Susan also shared that overwhelmingly staff want feedback on their work. Another major theme found in the responses was that people do not seem to understand merit and the connection between evaluation and merit. Finally, action-actions for the Senate were suggested in the document provided by Susan and Ian. These action items included: 1) getting results of the survey out to staff – sending the findings document shared with us during this meeting via email that Susan will draft and the full findings document will be put on-line with a link in the email. Phil suggested that we all read the full document and get edits and comments him by Wednesday July 2nd; 2) clarify for staff the basic expectations, rules and procedures for evaluation and merit – Phil is going to draft an email that would go out to staff to include information about what is expected for evaluations and the information about merit (which Susan shared is difficult to find and isn’t terribly formal); 3) develop a FAQ on evaluation and merit for the Unclassified Staff website – the governance committee will work on this and be in touch with Ola about its content; 4) help HREO get more involved in the process of evaluations – it was suggested that in an effort to help clarify the evaluation process for departments that the Senate help in compiling examples of evaluations and evaluation procedures from departments across all sectors of Unclassified staff that could be stored with HR. Governance will come up with an email to ask for departments to offer their suggestions and examples. The examples that HR provides now are from companies and these might not be appropriate or applicable.
Back to Standing Reports
Secretary: Angie Claussen was unable to attend, no report.
Treasurer: Noelle Kurth: Reported that the Senate balance with everything carried forward and our photos and meeting expenses from May paid is $3154.27.
Committee Reports
Governance and Representation: Phil Wilke
Phil wanted to extend a thank you to Susan and Ian for the great work they did on the latest survey and the write-up they shared with all of us at the meeting. Also the rest of the committee he shared had done great work throughout the year. Other items they plan to work on for the upcoming year include the regular legislative visit to Topeka and taking into account the comments from the debrief after the last visit. This year they want to look more closely at who to visit and assign certain people to talk to the right legislators – matching legislators on committees with staff members in those expertise/interest areas. Another area the committee will focus on this year is the by-laws in relation to what comes up with Paul’s new charges. And he still wants to get more names of interested parties to serve on the committee.
Public Relations: Mike Krings
Mike shared that he added the meeting dates to the university calendar and added the photos to the website. He said Thelma has been really helpful during the transition. He also handed out the list of interested people who had expressed interest in serving on committees. It was discussed that this list may be missing a few people and Thelma said she had a spreadsheet of about 25 people she would share. Mike said he would get the list complete. It was again touched on that another email to elicit more participation in committees was needed and that Paul would send out another email extending the deadline. Once we get more nominations and Mike completes the spreadsheet, Paul and Jeannette will make recommendations to the Provost.
Elections: Megan Gannon
Megan said right now things are slow, but she is gathering information on this year’s election or order to know to do for next year’s election. Lying low for awhile is what seems par for this committee. She said Rick did a great job with this committee and she is just going to lie out a timeline of dates for this year and when things need to get accomplished.
University Support Staff: Maxine Younes
Maxine shared information about their discussion with the university liaison about Support Staff visit to the Capitol. The liaison suggested that teaming with Kansan Council for the visit may not be the best idea and perhaps going with Unclassified Staff on our visit would be better. Paul expressed that we had tried to keep things separate to keep our interests separate. Unclassified staff has a history of being misrepresented or misunderstood regarding who we are as a group and this merging might muddy the waters or dilute the progress we’ve made on that front, only confusing legislators as well.
Back to New Business
New Tasks Force Proposals
Website Overhaul – Paul suggested that our website be overhauled to be a better tool for Unclassified staff - more user-friendly and create a clearinghouse of information about professional development opportunities available across campus. It was decided that this could be worked into the existing charges of the Public Relations committee. Mike said he knew people he worked with that could help with this task and Paul had the name of a Senator to give Mike who also could be called up for assistance.
By-Law Review – Paul believes there are many sections of our by-laws that are now out-of-date and due to be updated in light of what we’ve learned and how the Senate has matured over the last several years since inception. It was also decided that this suggestion could be folded into the already existing charge of the Governance committee. Jeannette expressed concern that the by-laws are not completely thrown out and we start over, but build and change what we have. A suggestion was made that as the committee works to make suggestions for change to the Senate Executive Board, they use “Track Changes” in Word to ensure we are able to see the changes clearly.
Annual Survey – Paul wants to ensure that we are able to conduct annual surveys as needed by the various committees. It was discussed that the administration of such a survey – the logistics of doing so – could be a charge of the Elections committee, but that the content of each survey as it comes up would be the responsibility of the committee or group that undertakes the task.
Document Repository – Paul expressed that we do not have a centralized means of archiving historically data related to the Senate’s work. He has been working with Beth Warner, Assistant Vice Provost for Information Services, about how this could be accomplished. She is going to come to one of our future meetings to discuss the options. Everyone agreed it was something that we need to do. Rick suggested additionally looking at using ScholarWorks to meet this need.
Unclassified Senate Blood Drive
Senator Easan Selvan suggested that the Senate sponsor a blood drive. Discussion around this was varied, but overall the consensus was that many blood drives occur on campus and in the community already and promoting those would be best. Specifically Paul suggested that we promote the KU student’s on-campus blood drive.
Jeannette briefly discussed the fact that the Unclassified Staff is the only group who does not have representation with the Board of Regents. Faculty does and there is the Classified and Support Staff Council. All found this fact alarming. Paul suggested that he contact other state institutions unclassified staff to see about coming together to do something to solve this problem. He also said the topic will come up at our next complete Senate meeting.
Having gone over our allotted meeting time, Danny Kaiser moved to adjourn the meeting and Phil Wilke seconded. The meeting was adjourned at 1:47 pm.