Minutes from
Unclassified Senate Meeting
September 11, 2008
Sabatini Multicultural Center Room 116
Minutes recorded and transcribed by Angie Claussen
Senators in attendance: John Augusto, Debbie Baker, Claudia Bode, Diann Burright, Angie Claussen, Chris Claussen, Abby Coffin, Audrey Coleman, Dan Coonfield, Susan Corrigan, Paul Farran, Allyson Flaster, Ed Foley, Gail James, Jeannette Johnson, Danny Kaiser, Teresa Kopsa, Jamie Kramer, Mike Krings, Noelle Kurth, Paul Liechti, Angie Loving, Rebecca Mayer, Lucy McGilley, Susan Mercer, Denise Modin, Jason O’Connor, Amanda Ostreko, Kathy Pribbenow, Peggy Robinson, Aaron Quisenberry, Mary Ann Rasnak, Easan Selvan, Lisa Shaw, Andrew Shoemaker, Heidi Simon, Carolyn Thompson, Xinkun Wang, Rick Whitmore
Guests: Mary Berry, Bridget Bradley, Kim McNeley
Excused: Megan Gannon, Frederic Gutknecht, Tom Ryan, Phil Wilke
The meeting was called to order at noon by President Paul Farran.
The minutes of the July 10, 2008 meeting were approved as submitted.
Special Guest Mary Berry, University Senate President talked about how the Unclassified Senate committees and subcommittees that we are part of trickle up through Paul and Danny into University Senate Executive Committee. Mary wanted us to have a face to go with the name. Everyone went around and introduced themselves. Mary commented that it was good to see such a broad representation including the Edwards Campus and across this campus. She thanked the group for volunteering to serve and for all we do. She understands that we don’t get anything for this and we give up our lunches.
University Wide Committee Representatives
Kim McNeley: Academic Policies and Procedures Committee Representative
Kim said that this topic and information is near and dear to CLA&S and anytime you want to give input shoot her an email or give her a call.
Last year AP&P looked at Continuing Ed courses and whether courses taught through KUCE should be resident credit. The result of this evaluation is that starting fall 2009 they will be recognized as resident credit. These courses will become part of the KU transcript at that time. KUCE courses are part of the continued agenda for this year.
The withdrawal policy was another topic last year. Each individual school or college was asked to set their own regulations on the policy regarding whether or not they will require a signature to drop a course. There is no longer the WF/WP option when a student drops a course. They now receive a “W”. The policy was changed because it was being applied completely differently depending on the instructor and course. Starting tomorrow students will no longer be able to drop online and they need to know if they need signatures to drop classes. CLA&S will not be requiring signatures.
This last year the Course Repeat policy became more of an automated process.
CLA&S brought up having an A+ for grading and it was denied.
Kim provided a handout that outlines what is on the table so far for this year. This includes the following items. Look at policies and procedures for drops and adds for classes that do not meet on the regular university schedule (KUCE). Reviewing the current policy on incomplete grades. Incomplete grades can be given for a good reason but right now the policy is not very clear. The extent of time where a grade can remain unlapsed is unmanageable as the policy currently states that it is the time that a student can enroll in a course and that it is offered. Right now the computing system cannot keep up with this and we have 8,000 incomplete grades out there. Students wanting to follow up 10 years later, etc. Another charge is examining recommendations for the initiative 2015 as you read this and see policies that are needed please let Kim know. Final charge has to do with setting a minimum required GPA University wide, for graduation. The proposal is a 2.0.
Jeannette asked if there is any University wide standard for progress toward degree. Kim said that not right now as there is not a standard number of hours required. Would like to put into place a standard for what is required based on requirements. School of Engineering is the only school that has a specified progress toward degree. Student enrolls in 12 hours and drops hours and does the same thing the next semester. So enrolled in 24 hours but only completed 6. In some ways this seems to be a waste of University resources as they are taking up space in classrooms but not finishing. Also seems unjust to student, we need to stop enabling them to do this. The CLA&S probation and dismissal policy has become more strict to try and help students make this progress. Have made clearer messages which has decreased CLA&S numbers but the number of probation students in the classroom has decreased. University of Texas only allows a certain number of withdrawals. KU is trying to tighten up the process and giving them clearer messages and information. Withdrawal policy would be the next way to tighten this up a bit.
Noelle asked about the issue of transfer students and admission requirements. There is a group that is being conferred about transfer issues that Danny Anderson is a part of. Looking at if they need to look at a current policy or put new policies in place. Paul explained the GPA difference issue is that students are admitted based on all classes completed at the community college but KU may not end up accepting some of these courses and so the transfer GPA ends up really being below the minimum required. Several places this is being chatted about and it could end up in AP&P.
Andrew asked if AP&P has talked with the enroll and pay people about how this will work for incomplete grades. Kim responded that this would be the goal, for enroll and pay to be able to handle this, and Cindy Derritt would support that. Fantasy would be that an instructor would submit grades and have a box that would clarify what is needed to be done, grade will lapse on this date and the grade it will lapse to if no additional work is done. And the grade would lapse on given date.
Mary Anne asked if AP&P had open meetings and Kim responded that AP&P meets in a smaller room and the schedule is changed based on members schedules. It’s not closed but there isn’t a lot of room in the space itself. Their meeting agenda should be posted on the University Governance web site. Minutes and reports are posted there as well. Many would like to be part of the conversation on the 2015 issue. George McCleary is the chair and you could contact him to see if he has a meeting schedule for the year.
Bridget Bradley: Calendar Committee
Bridget reported that the basic function of this committee is to set the calendar for the University. This is done five years out and has to be approved by the Board of Regents. The calendar does not vary much because there are only so many days in a year and so many instruction days that are required.
The committee does set the finals week schedule and conveys this information to faculty. If there are any changes to finals for a faculty member this committee has to approve them.
Calendar committee meets twice a semester and they work mainly on the finals week information. The last couple of years there has been discussion about stop day and finals week and how long that should be and if we really need a stop day. Stop day has been the majority of the discussion as this has been tossed around for a couple of years. Students feel very connected to stop day. Some of the faculty see stop day as maybe needing to shorten instructional days as other states have less hours required. This might allow for a winter session or a between spring and summer session.
This committee is also reviewing for initiative 2015 and looking at some inter-sessions and the kind of instruction we do that goes along with this.
Jeannette added that stop day is an artifact from the old days when we had a longer finals week and this happened in the middle of the week. Student success would be happy to see this disappear as they tend to see a spike in inappropriate behavior during this day.
Aaron Quisenberry: Transit Commission
Aaron passed around a handout on what they have been doing for the past year. The bus system has been run by the students for the last 30 years and then in the past year the system switched over to the parking department.
KU on Wheels now owns it’s own buses. KU now has a monetary way to purchase buses and manage their own plate. KU on Wheels also moved to the parking and transit office.
Last year the Transportation Board approved the creation of this new Transit Commission. Now there is faculty and staff representation on the committee. The Provost has final say on what the board does.
This year they experimented with a biodiesel blend for the first time. This does not work so well in the winter so they have been experimenting with a 5% blend.
This year there is a new service provider, MV Transportation out of California instead of the Lawrence Bus Company. This was a 17-month contract that will expire December 31st this year. They will be working this fall on a new contract and are interested in signing a 3-year contract this time.
In the past few years there had been a consistent decrease in the bus ridership for a variety of possible reasons. There was a 15% decrease so this last year the students voted to have everyone be able to ride the buses for free with no pass. They can just get on the bus as it is now built into their fees. Faculty and staff can also ride the bus – you just have to get on and ride. Parking fees pays for the faculty and staff to do this, and they can ride off campus as well.
A $20 bus acquisition fee was added so that KU can begin buying the buses. This ends up being almost $1 million dollars a year which will allow KU to continue to purchase new buses so that we always have updated buses. The plan is to phase out the older buses and the older buses will either be kept for a bigger fleet if they are worth keeping or retired and used for parts to keep the other buses running. Lawrence buses were old and older from 70s and 80s and now we are working with brand new buses, mid-80s and mid-90s buses. We will eventually get up to having all newer buses. The total Campus Transportation Fee per student is $64.90 each year.
Safebus runs on Friday and Saturday evenings and there are 3 routes that go through downtown and gives them a safe ride back up to campus and a few apartments. The ridership has doubled now that people know about them.
There is an agreement with the City of Lawrence that students can now ride a City bus with an ID. Faculty and staff can do this as well. Joint RFP with the city that maybe the campus and city will come together to have one big bus system. Aaron did not know how that will go. A “Students for transit” group was started to create awareness amongst students about the bus changes.
KU now owns 38 buses and co-owns 5 park and ride buses with the city.
Ridership numbers were really down for KU on Wheels and SafeRide in the past few years. KU on Wheels had seen a 15 percent decrease and SafeRide had seen a 27% decrease. Since the Universal Access was passed they projected a 20% increase and the ridership has shot through the roof with an average increase of 270% overall. So this seems to have been very successful. If you have any questions let Aaron know. Danny Kaiser coordinates and oversees the current bus system.
The information provided on the handout is semester to date information for FY08 and FY09. There were 9,500 boardings a day last year and now 14,000 boardings a day.
How will the T ruling effect us? If referendum fails there will no longer be a city bus system if it passes they will be able to continue. If it passes then we can move together to build one large system if that is what is decided. If it fails we don’t know how that will change buses for KU.
Reports:
President: Paul Farran
Good news is we have a new senator Lucy McGilley is the director of the Self Fellows for School of Engineering and replaces Tricia Zerger who left KU. Frederic Gutknecht has had to resign due to family and work issues. Please submit names to Paul so that we can get this vacancy filled. This is an administrative position so we would need someone from that area. Paul will talk to Megan to see if we had any runners up in the administrative area at our election this last year.
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. We are looking at a $19 million cut at the med center and a $19 million cut for the Lawrence campus. The med center is currently on a hiring freeze. We are looking at a 2% cut for FY09r and 7% for FY10. 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. 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. Paul quoted him as saying that he “prefers decentralized decision making” and asked what does he mean by this. He was not able to give Paul anything concrete.
Paul reported that at the University Senate Executive committee meeting they had discussed the amendments to rules and regulations on scholarly misconduct. Currently we did not comply with national laws and so there were some changes, and took out some redundancies. This went over fine and the Provost signed off on almost all of the recommendations. Provost and chancellor did make a few changes but SenEx decided they did not want to challenge anything that was not approved. They decided to just accept these.
The task force on Employee Benefits that we discussed has formed. Bill Crowe is chairing and this group is just getting started.
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.
Paul gave the Governance report since Phil was unable to be at the meeting. They had their first meeting and would love to have some additional members as they are reviewing by-laws and planning legislative visit this year. If you are interested please get involved and encourage your colleagues to do this as well. Think about others in your staff that might be interested. Volunteering for this group and then they have subcommittees so they could work on a specific charge. Contact Phil if you have any volunteers. Paul will send out a summary of their charges.
Paul gave the Election report as Megan Gannon was unable to attend the meeting. Election committee will meet in October to set the timeline for elections and to see how to promote this and get people interested in being on the senate. They will be coming up with ideas on how can we promote this group.
Secretary: Angie Claussen thanked everyone for letting her know when they would not be able to attend. She will be going on maternity leave and asked for some people to help with taking notes at some upcoming meetings. Abby Coffin agreed to cover the November 13th meeting and Mary Ann Rasnak agreed to cover the December 11th meeting.
Treasurer: Noelle Kurth reported that we have $5,762 in our account. We now have our allotment from this year and carry over from last year. We lost $54 this year with budget cuts. Noelle suggested that we be thinking of ways to spend this money. Some of the options that have been mentioned are possible scholarships through the professional development committee and the Wheat State tour in the spring. Aaron asked if it is in our best interest to not spend money if the allocation will be cut again next year. Noelle will touch base with Kathy Reed to see if there will be a bigger cut next year. It was suggested that we could do one annual scholarship but perhaps have multiple scholarships this year since we have some extra money. The Professional Development committee will make proposals about their ideas and how to proceed with the scholarship idea. UPSA used to give grants and they were not well publicized and there was no screening criteria so it was first come first served basis. If we set this up there need to be guidelines and structure to this. Send ideas on how to spend money.
Professional Development Committee: Allyson Flaster reported that they had their first meeting. Career mapping was the first event for the semester and it went very well. The handouts are available as well as the power point for you on the Unclassified Senate web site please share this information with your colleagues. The group set the agenda for events for this semester and their theme will be “Understanding today and preparing for future”. Some of the events planned will include a speaker at the Dole Institute, a workshop on texting and the technology students use, Audio Reader, and Career Services. A subcommittee will look at the state of professional development across the University and one of their charges will be the scholarship idea. The hope to have an ongoing scholarship not just to do this for one year. If you are interested in this take a look at this subcommittee. Will look at some of the charges that came out of the Governance committee survey last year. They are using technology – one member is in Wichita and he teleconferenced into their meeting. They would like to look at how can we use technology for events. Edwards Campus and others off campus would appreciate streaming these sessions so they could more easily participate. Options would be to video tape the events and then put them online for people to watch. Union can do this as does KUCE. Free via KUCE classroom. There is a charge to use Union services. This committee also has a working group or subcommittee that is looking at KU being able to participate in the KC Corporate challenge. September 24th Alderson Auditorium Provost will give his brown bag noon -1:00. Email was sent to all unclassified staff and will send another one this next week.
Public Relations Committee: Mike Krings had the committee’s first meeting two weeks ago to go over charges and divvy up duties. The Unclassified web site and making it more of a resource is their biggest charge this year. The committee will dig through the site and make suggestions on design, content, etc. Please everyone take a look at the site and send ideas to Mike. Let your colleagues know as well. How can we make this something more that you would use as an unclassified employee. Paul’s specific idea would be a list of past Presidents and a history of how we started and where we are now. Paul has a list of Presidents he can share. The committee will also be publicizing professional development events with emails, on calendar, on site, and in the Oread.
University Support Staff: Peggy Robinson – student housing and maintenance is our new USS representative. She has been with USS about 3 months and will be coming to our meetings. Not much to report today. They have been working on the supervisor evaluation forms and will hopefully have something soon. Teresa Kopsa is our rep to attend their meetings.
Student Senate: Mark Pacey unable to attend.
Unfinished Business
University Wide committees. Jeannette is struggling with appointments to some committees to represent our group. Colleagues in student success are great at volunteering but we are struggling with people from other areas. There are eight university support staff and nine unclassified staff on the committee. Terms are usually 4 years but have had 3 vacancies on USS side and 4 on US side this year. One of these appointments is fulfilling an unexpired term and the others are 4 years. Until she hears from Dennis Constance on the USS representative names she cannot sort out all the pieces because she wants to have a broad balance and representation. Right now have lots of student success, some research people and if anyone else interested let her know. Do the dinner, the recognition, and the monthly winners. People really enjoy this committee. Meet from all over campus and get to learn about some great people. Other committee is retirees rights and benefits committee. Have 2 openings and one volunteer who is a retiree. Would love to have more volunteers. This is a 3 year commitment. Let Jeannette or Paul know if you have someone that would be good for this. They do not have to be on Senate.
New Business
Shortage of nominations for Employee of the Month for US. Would like to have people nominated. An email is sent to Deans, Directors and chairs. If you know someone in another office is doing a great job submit a nomination and see if there is someone else to fill in the duties.
Paul gone for Oct 30th so Jeannette will lead that meeting.
Meeting was adjourned at 1:25