Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Meeting
My 15, 2008
Mallott Room, Kansas Union
Minutes transcribed by Angie Claussen
Attendance: John Augusto, Debbie Baker, Claudia Bode, Diann Burright, Angie Claussen, Chris Claussen, Abby Coffin, Dan Consolver, Ronda Consolver, Susan Corrigan, Paul Farran, Megan Gannon, Frederic Gutknecht IV, Gail James, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Jamie Kramer, Mike Krings, Noelle Kurth, Paul Liechti, Angie Loving, Lucille Marino, Rebecca Mayer, Susan Mercer, Jason O’Connor, Amanda Ostreko, Mary Ann Rasnak, Tom Ryan, Easan Selvan, Andrew Shoemaker, Heidi Simon, Thelma Simons, Rick Whitmore, Phil Wilke, Tricia Zerger
The meeting was called to order at 1:00 p.m. by President Paul Farran
Reports:
President: Paul Farran
Paul thanked Danny for his great leadership. Have accomplished many goals over the past year. Has represented us well and appreciate his long hours. Round of applause. Will take photo at 1:00
Thank you to committee chairs. Almost all work that comes out of our senate is from the committees. Rick elections great, web looks better than ever, great events from professional development, legislative visit and subcommittees.
Congrats to all the new senators, it is great to see so many dedicated staff around campus. Look forward to working with everyone over the next year. Know they will have great ideas to bring to the group and encourage them to join committees.
Round of applause for new senators – welcome. Everyone introduced themselves and told where from on campus.
Paul commented that when he joined 4 years ago he was not really sure what he had gotten into. There are handouts about University governance and we are listed on there with the other three governing bodies for faculty, University Support Staff and students. University Senate is made up of all four of these groups with faculty having heavy weight with 39 members and University Support Staff and Unclassified Senate have 3 members and students have 11 members.
The new University Senate President is Mary Barry. Please refer to the spreadsheet that lists all University Senate members. Per our bylaws our three members are the past president, president-elect, and then another senator that we elect – we will be asking for nominations for these later this meeting. Our President is an ex officio member and he reports back to us on what is happening.
We are governed by our by-laws and we are always making adjustments and revising. Please check out the web site and let us know if you see any issues that need to be discussed and resolved.
We have a $2,662.00 budget allotted to us by University Governance for things like printing, photo taking, professional development, etc. We can take motions from the body on how to spend our budget so if you have ideas please let us know. Paul has some ideas on how to spend the money that we will talk about.
Our meetings loosely follow Roberts Rules of Order so check these out if you are not familiar. We will follow an agenda similar to the one today. You will receive them in advance so you can print them and bring them with you. You should all have the schedule for meetings for the rest of year. The left column is full senate meetings, if you are unable to attend please let Angie or Paul know so we can mark you as excused. Executive committee meetings are on the right hand side, they are open meetings so you can attend any you would like to attend. We are scheduled around campus so that we can be seen and so that we can see other areas of campus. There is a link to the campus map so that you can find the buildings if you are unfamiliar. Paul will send outlook meeting messages for these.
The 1st executive meeting in June will be a transitional meeting for exec.
Two consecutive unexcused absences will result in removal from Senate – president will select a new rep. if you feel like you have a made a commitment you will not be able to keep let us know and we will find someone with more time.
As the president I would like to hear your opinions, thoughts, concerns, comments, etc. on how to benefit Unclassified Staff.
Paul’s goals for the year:
Change our the bylaws allow for more committees or mirror University Senate to create a task force when the duty does not really fall under one of our four committees.
A web site overhaul, would like the group to brainstorm what kinds of resources we could pull together for all Unclassified Staff. In July Paul will call for a motion to create a task force to work on this.
By-law review, we need rules that dictate when and what we actually do so Paul would propose a motion for task force to review by-laws and what we do and make them cohesive.
Annual Survey, this could be where we spend some of our budget that we don’t use currently. We could work with the Office of Institutional Research and Planning to find out what Unclassified Staff interests are. It is hard to serve them if we do not know what the needs really are. All of the current governance committee charges and subcommittees came from the survey outcome from over a year ago. We may need a task force to monitor the needs of our committees in creating surveys for all Unclassified Staff and then work with OIRP to make these official and be able to gather more information
We need an official document repository or a central place to keep all of our information from Unclassified Senate. Right now it’s all over campus and it would be helpful to have one place where we can view the information. Beth Warner from Xythos came to talk to a few of the members about using this for our group. Paul thinks this can meet our needs and will present to the group at an upcoming meeting as to what we can do.
In July Paul anticipates motions for developing a task force or two and what the charges and responsibilities would be and members to join the task force.
Have a chance to do some wonderful things but we do not want to overextend so we need to see what we would like to happen.
Paul would like to keep the focus on the needs of Unclassified Staff and working on having reps from other governing bodies attend our meetings and attend their meetings as well.
Paul will continue to hold one on one meetings with Provost so please let him know if anything needs to be taken to that level.
New Business
Election of Committee chairs
Governance and Representation: Phil Wilke accepted and Aaron Quisenberry removed his nomination. Phil was elected.
Professional Development: Heidi Simon accepted and withdrew her nomination and Allyson Flaster accepted. Allyson was elected.
Public Relations: Mike Krings accepted his nomination and was elected.
Elections: Rick Whitmore accepted and withdrew his nomination and Megan Gannon accepted her nomination and was elected.
University Senate representative: Jason O’Connor accepted his nomination and Mary Anne Rasnak accepted her nomination. Jason was elected.
Per our by-laws we will have four meetings each semester and one in the summer. We were only meeting half this many times so there will be more meetings this year.
Photographs – we took a break to have our group photo taken for the web site.
Additional Committee Appointments – Jeannette
We have nine committees where we have representatives but we have very few with vacancies this year. The committee descriptions and openings will be on our web site so if you are interested please let Jeannette know or complete the interest form on the web. There will be an email sent to all staff. This year
Unclassified Staff committees – be sure to talk to those not on senate to get them involved. This is a great way to meet other people across campus and see other facets of what senate is doing. Within a week we should have this info up on web site and will follow with an email. One email now and then one a little later.