Approved Minutes For Meeting On January 16, 2012 | Administrative Professional Staff Council | SIU

Date: January 16, 2012

Program:

1. The meeting was called to order at 1:58 p.m. by the Chair, Kathy Jones. Visitors and guests were welcomed and introduced.

2. Roll Call

Members Present: Steve Buhman, Don Castle, Angela Cummings-Hunter, Pat Eckert, Jon Geiger, Jill Gobert, Jenni Janssen, Kathy Jones, Faye Joyner-Keene, Charlotte Sarao, Rod Sievers, Lori Stettler, Valerie Brooks Wallin, Keri Young.

Members Absent: Don Patton.

Visitors and Guests: Tracy Bennett, Rita Cheng, Colleen Kuczynski, John Nicklow.

3. Guests

K. Jones welcomed Chancellor Cheng and Provost Nicklow, noting they were provided a list of discussion topics in advance that the Council believes are relevant to A/P staff (see appendix). She asked that the Chancellor and Provost go through each topic and then allow time for follow-up questions from Council members.

Chancellor Cheng began with Question 5: Given the critical nature of our institutional enrollment issues, what can you tell us about new initiatives designed to increase enrollment? How can A/P Council and A/P staff help in furthering these initiatives? Chancellor Cheng believes there have been a huge number of initiatives underway to increase enrollment. She characterized the effort as making sure the University can recruit students who can be successful here, and then do everything possible to insure their success, whether it is the first year or beyond. With respect to scholarship initiatives, they are expanding the outreach to prospective students and families; and the branding and marketing are paying off, as evidenced by the 1100 prospective students and their families who were on campus last weekend. Other initiatives include: i) changes in recruitment, financial aid and admissions strategies, as well as strategies for reaching transfer students; ii) the way open houses, new student orientation and graduation have been revamped, and convocation has been brought back; iii) improvements to campus, such as classroom and teaching lab upgrades; roof and window repairs on buildings; grounds improvements (pedestrian walkways, the woods and around the lake), all to make this an environment where people want to come to study and live; iv) redesign of the UCOL classes, math and English; gateway courses, and the technology being used; v) having volunteers help with recruitment and developing strategies for alums in order to start a campaign for scholarships; vi) being very aggressive in RFPs for housing. Chancellor Cheng indicated there are many dimensions to enrollment-- campus enrollment, distance enrollment, fall, spring, summer, undergraduate, graduate, new students coming from high school, returning students—so, it is not “a one size fits all.” How can the Council and A/P staff further these initiatives? Stay positive. It is hard work and not something that has positive outcomes right away. All the research shows that it takes a while to build momentum. She also suggested that staff look for ways to volunteer. Provost Nicklow commented that currently, there are over 500,000 students in the admissions funnel, and that is just senior year. They are about to implement a junior, sophomore and freshman search. The University’s future depends on enrollment, and just based on the sheer numbers, they will need everyone's help.

Chancellor Cheng added that most of the feedback they are getting from local communities, now that the University is contacting every high school student in Carbondale, Carterville, Marion and Murphysboro, is that the materials being sent out stack up to the quality of other institutions and reflect well on SIU; however they are late. High school students are receiving materials from other institutions a year earlier. The sophomore/junior list will allow the University to send preliminary materials earlier in their high school career and then get them into the standard cycle for recruiting when everyone else does. The Chancellor also suggested that everyone needs to fix their web pages. There are dead links, wrong information, old logos, etc. The use of "SIUC" is “in-house speak” and does not cut it on the national market.

K. Jones indicated that several months back, Katharine Suski (director of Undergraduate Admissions) had attended a Council meeting and gave her presentation on the admissions “funnel,” and the Council really wanted to get a better understanding of what the new admissions initiatives were. One of the things discussed is the fact that the Board of Trustees decides on fees so late. She asked if there is any movement to get in front of the financial aid piece. Chancellor Cheng responded no. They have submitted fees to the President's office and had an initial discussion about tuition as well, but tuition and fees must be presented for information and discussion at one Board meeting and then for action at the next meeting. The Board does not want to take action before they have a sense of what the budget will be. From their perspective, it is not so late. She indicated that the tuition and fee materials will be ready for the Board meeting at the end of February and then up for a vote in May. Financial aid is packaged with an estimate, and it is done on the high side so they do not have to go back and re-package.

Question 2: Some units feel that they have been cut so severely that they are struggling just to provide basic services to students. When will there be a discussion of what services are central to our mission and the successful recruitment and retention of students? For the future, on what basis will strategic funding decisions be made such as the return of dollars lost to “sweeping” of salary lines? Chancellor Cheng explained that they do not expect any new funding from the state for years, if ever. She believes the new normal that people talk about is that the days for a lot of state appropriations for higher education and the ability of the federal government to step up the way it did in the past are probably not going to happen again. She knows there are states that are starting to readjust or stop the bleeding of their appropriations to higher education, but they are few; most are still under fiscal stress. In Illinois, the state is under a lot of financial stress, so the campus is preparing its budget with the hope of a flat budget, but acknowledging there is a high probability of another cut. She believes there is a lot of support for higher education, just not much in the way of realistic monetary support. The only choice is to continue to reorganize, restructure, eliminate, realign and look at the one other source of revenue to fill some gaps: tuition. She could not say where they are strategically reinvesting in areas that are stressed; instead, they need to think differently. The campus is attempting to catch up on information technology in order to adopt “workflow,” the term for being able to automate many of the things that are currently done manually so that less staff can handle the work. This year, the campus will be working to automate those routine tasks that are done on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, she is looking for ways to combine departments so that there is less administrative structure, and procedures and processes are being examined to eliminate redundancy. Hiring continues to be very sporadic and has been slowed down because it saves money in the interim. K. Jones commented that, as a consequence, one of the things they see as A/P staff is the impact vacancies have on front line customer service. For example, people call and cannot get a live person because there are no staff; or, departments are relying on student workers. It seems that some of these actions work at cross purposes in terms of impacting how students and their parents feel reaching out to the University. Chancellor Cheng referred back to the use of IT, stating that many universities have gone to one email server, something the University will be implementing in the summer. There are currently 38 individual servers and one person to support them in a central function. This also means everyone has separate calendars and staff to help set up meetings; that is unheard of in universities in this country now because of the way technology can be used. The days of everyone having a clerical/administrative staff support person are also going to wane away. The front door piece has to be re-thought, possibly in the restructuring or sharing of support staff. The campus has become very “siloed” and needs to do things differently. Some areas of the campus are already doing this. The Chancellor indicated she really likes what the CIO, David Crain, is doing in Information Technology and the idea of using it to get work done. She suggested the Council might want to invite D. Crain to a meeting to follow up.

D. Castle indicated that when the Council engaged the constituency in a discussion (during town hall meetings the Council held), there was a feeling among A/P staff that they would like to be involved and help. There was also a feeling that maybe staff could be asked more often to provide information or help with answers or solutions or ideas. K. Jones suggested one idea would be to have listening sessions with the Chancellor for A/P staff. Chancellor Cheng responded that the other side to that is that she believes internal communications in general are poor. The University’s partnership with Lipman-Hearne will provide several strategies for improving that communication. She noted that she sees all the emails the Council forwards in order to keep constituents informed. Many campuses have gone to announcement pages that everyone gets on a weekly announcement. The staff in University Communications is stretched very thin trying to handle the campus news and prepare the Saluki Times, when other campuses have gone to web page-types of things. So, that is something that will be worked on in order to get better information out to people so they do not feel disconnected. If she can then move ahead with some opportunity for formal or informal input, that would be good. She had hoped the strategic planning process provided that opportunity, as there were many A/P staff involved in that process. She indicated she is willing to go out to any group.

As a follow-up to the Chancellor’s comment on strategic planning, K. Jones asked if she could tell the Council where that process is currently. They had hoped that more of the strategic funding decisions would come out of that process. Chancellor Cheng responded that the Campus Leadership Meeting is scheduled for February 7, and that will be the beginning of the preparation to launch the strategic plan. Clearly, the University’s funding decisions need to match its priorities. Also in that meeting, they will be preparing a report card of where they are with the strategic plan. Some of the action items from the strategic plan have had quite a bit of traction, and others need some help in getting started.

Question 1: In light of the rumors on campus about the conversion of continuing A/P appointments to term contracts, please comment on the rumors and tell us your philosophy on the future of continuing appointments for A/P staff. Also, can you tell us how the University’s current policy for the conversion of term to continuing appointments after three years of satisfactory performance will apply to the term appointments of newly hired or promoted A/P staff? Chancellor Cheng reported there is no campus policy that was created; no one should worry about their position being converted from continuing to term because of some mandate coming forward across the campus; however, she will say that many of the deans, vice chancellors and directors are very concerned about flexibility and about hiring people that might then trigger a layoff of someone else later on. There has been a lot of caution in bringing in new people and bringing on new people as term until there is some sense that it will be a permanent hire; after all, the last person in should be the first person out. With the continuing appointment rules that are in place, the University can no longer afford to have someone sitting in the Northwest Annex for a year doing budget work because of the way staff are appointed. There is just not that flexibility. Having said that, the Chancellor indicated that she is aware of the network of advising, the changes that are being made to improve the advising network. There were some advisors in the College of Liberal Arts who are going to be subject to term appointment only in order to reorganize and restructure the advising. She does not believe those individuals need to worry about their jobs; they just may be doing something completely different as a result of the actions the dean wants to take to improve that area. The new Vice Chancellor for Development was very concerned about staffing and the organizational structure of his area. He has put several of those staff members on term only to, again, determine how he is going to double the annual giving. There are other examples of reorganization, and then there are the classic performance issues; but, the two should not be confused. Provost Nicklow added that there are several administrators with academic appointments, and in many of those cases those are term appointments. He indicated that he is on term, as are chairs, primarily because they have continuing faculty appointments, which is the other category. Chancellor Cheng pointed out that it is also pretty common across the country that when a dean is hired permanently into a dean’s position, they have a tenured appointment with the University and are at-will employees in a high level position. All the high level positions are term, going down to chair. For those A/P staff who have been at the University a long time, there is no effort to change policy other than in specific instances--because of the budget or because of the goal that was set for the directives of the vice chancellors. There is an expectation that there is going to be a very different and new structure going forward.

K. Jones commented that one of the things the Council discussed is that the only model the A/P staff knows for conversion of a continuing appointment to term is when the staff member is about to get fired. She believes it would be beneficial for administrative/professional staff if the Chancellor was willing to consider discussing the creation of a new model for term appointments; for example, if someone was in such an appointment for a long enough period of time, there might be some notice as opposed to the term being up at the end of the fiscal year. Also, there could be some accrual of vacation and sick leave to make it more palatable. She asked the Chancellor if she would be willing to sit down with members of the Council to discuss some new model that would build in some protection for those staff members. That would go a long way toward making people feel more comfortable. Chancellor Cheng believes the discomfort is somewhat out of proportion to what is actually happening. There are a very low number of positions being converted for reasons that would be there at any given time. There is an assumption that a term appointment will be renewed rather than not. She believes that in the past, the only time that a continuing appointment was converted to term was because of failure to perform a job rather than a need to be flexible to make sure layoffs do not end up occurring. She explained that if a budget is cut, and there is no flexibility with a year’s notice, that year a department would be losing money and would likely result in having to lay off two people. Departments cannot operate without flexibility. The University has cut $30 million with no layoffs. There has been an incredible focus by all the people who are in charge of fiscal officers trying to make this work. She pointed out that the vast majority of people are on continuing; there are real reasons that exist for the use of term, and she does not want to take that flexibility away.

S. Buhman commented that a lot of new people are being hired on term. Are they looking at being term for the long-term? Chancellor Cheng responded that it was possible, or it is possible they could be converted. There are some positions that clearly over time, the person’s performance is great and there are no concerns about the unit needing to cut staff; and even if that happens, that particular role is never going away, so there is no reason not to make it continuing.

J. Geiger asked if a position being term is likely to change the pool of candidates available to hire. Chancellor Cheng responded that she has not found that to be the case. People see the benefits of working here, and there are lots of applicants for jobs. J. Geiger indicated that Council members have also heard rumors regarding people being afraid to accept a promotion where they are being asked to move into a term position from a continuing appointment. Is she seeing much reluctance from staff who are in that position? Both Chancellor Cheng and Provost Nicklow responded that they have not seen that occur. Chancellor Cheng indicated she has seen it on the classified side, the concern about getting a promotion because that would put them in a different pecking order for that position. The administration attempts to tell people that the risk is very low and the reward is significant for taking on a promotion. Provost Nicklow added that there is a real shift in understanding and culture and what “term versus continuing” has meant. Moving from that term position to a continuing appointment, whether it is a short-term or long-term period, simply means committed to performance.

D. Castle commented that A/P staff are public sector employees, which means while they do share similarities with private sector workers, they also have to deal with the political environment to which the University is accountable. Staff do not have much they can count on as an employee constituency group; but, this continuing contract is one of those things, along with benefits, pensions and some kind of cost of living raise over time. For A/P staff, a continuing contract is one of those key things that relate to how they feel about their job security in a job market. Staff understand the politics of the situation where a term contract could be based on budget or performance issues; but, it can be based on political reasons, e.g., a personal attempt to get rid of someone. Many staff that have been around a while have known or seen that happen to people. This is just a perspective that a lot of the constituency shares. K. Jones added that, by and large, she believes the A/P staff on this campus give their hearts and souls to this institution. Chancellor Cheng pointed out that a vast majority of A/P staff on campus are continuing appointments. K. Jones responded that, with the climate of a bad state economy and bad budget times for the University, people are nervous. Chancellor Cheng agreed that she can have a conversation with the Council about what a new model would look like, but pointed out that A/P staff have great job security. J. Geiger commented that staying positive under the circumstances may be a little more challenging for A/P staff. Chancellor Cheng responded that she is aware that coaches and development officers are not continuing, and she does not see other high level directors, vice chancellors and deans as continuing in the future. That is kind of the industry standard across the country. She reiterated that there are no policy changes; rather, she is giving deans and directors the flexibility to figure this out because it is uncertain what will happen come July 1. Provost Nicklow added that he has never had the discussion about putting any class of individuals on term appointments.

C. Kuczynski asked that if the new deans being hired in on term do not make it as a dean, do they leave the University or do they fall into a faculty line? Chancellor Cheng responded that they go into a faculty line, so there is a safety. The assumption is that their appointments will be renewed, but they are all required to have tenure. Most deans will move on, though, because they do not want to stay at an institution where they came to be a dean. S. Buhman pointed out that staff in those kinds of dual setups accrue vacation and sick days, whereas regular A/P on term do not. K. Jones noted that A/P staff on continuing appointments accrue vacation and sick days from year to year. On the other hand, term A/P receive vacation and days, but if they are not used by July 1, then those days are lost. Chancellor Cheng indicated she will get back to K. Jones about the underlying issues involved.

Question 3: The dissemination (email of scanned copies) of recent changes in academic policies (e.g., grade repeats, forgiveness policy, incompletes, and syllabus policy) has caught some frontline people off-guard. How were these changes promulgated and vetted and will this process become more formalized and transparent to the campus community? Chancellor Cheng asked for an explanation of what front line people feel they are left out of the conversations on policy changes. K. Jones responded that it is her understanding that as some academic policies have been changed recently, the way staff were notified was by scanned copy of the policy over email. It did not appear to be formal because it was scanned and did not indicate by whom it had been discussed or approved. Chancellor Cheng responded that the front line people who needed to be involved in the admissions office, the registrar and the advisor network were consulted and informed. The policies went through the Undergraduate Education Policy Committee of the Faculty Senate (UEPC) and then to the Senate. It took over a year of research and committee work, so if there were front line people who were indeed caught off guard, then they were likely people who needed to be in the circle that were not. She is not sure how the information was disseminated, but these were overhauls that were in desperate need of being done--policies on evaluation of courses, the ability to substitute courses, etc. Provost Nicklow indicated that the process began about year and a half ago. It started with a small group of policies to make sure they were consistent with each other. However, it seemed like every time they tackled one policy, it opened up three more and just kept snowballing. That is why it took so long. It was a group of people from the Registrar, Enrollment Management, deans, faculty, advisors who were focused on the investigation of best practices and developing a policy. It took some time to vet it through the Faculty Senate and Graduate Council, as well as the advising network that was set up. He believes the issue is in the dissemination of the information. He indicated that many of the policies do not go into effect until next year. The idea was to get down on paper what was coming and to push that out to advisors. The deans were involved, and they have been asked on multiple occasions to share that with the college, with advisors, chairs and faculty. The actual formal document is the Undergraduate Catalog, and that is what they are working on right now. There will be massive catalog changes this summer, and not just policy changes. C. Sarao mentioned that she had received a copy of some proposed changes with nothing official to it and was told this is the policy. She believes the other disconnect is that a lot of these policies faculty need to be aware of and they are not, despite the involvement of a large group of people. Chancellor Cheng believes their efforts to strengthen the advising network is going to pay off in time. The advising network needs to have a formal voice in the review of academic policy so they have the ability to share the issues they are seeing and also get more information out. There are so many front line advisors, so the work that the Provost and Tamara Workman are doing to build that professionalism in advising will pay off because much of that information will be disseminated to the advising network. K. Jones believes the topic of strengthening the advising network would be a wonderful topic for future discussion at a Council meeting because so many A/P are advisors. Provost Nicklow indicated that as rumors develop anytime changes occur, it might be a good idea to get ahead of those rumors and invite T. Workman to talk with the Council about the emphasis being placed on advisement and providing additional support in an effort to enhance a student's experience. K. Jones indicated she will ask T. Workman to attend a future meeting.

Question 4: Recent actions to limit approvals such as fiscal officer authority and approvals in the hiring process are perceived to create bottlenecks that are inefficient for conducting the University’s business. For example, the length of time required for the approval process in hiring can result in losing excellent candidates, particularly minorities and women, when searches don’t proceed in a timely fashion. Why are the Vice Chancellors and Deans not empowered to make more decisions for their areas with regard to hiring once the position request form has been approved? Chancellor Cheng explained that limiting fiscal officer authority is good, sound internal control. These are the people who are authorized or not authorized to commit the institution to pay something financially. There were many areas that did not have co-signatures, and there were over 460 fiscal officers that could commit the institution; that is four times that of most universities. As a result, they began to look at who really could sign on behalf of the University and to reduce the number of people who could commit the institution. The internal auditors wanted it to happen; and, it is good, sound business practice. Fiscal officers are clearly at different levels of spending, and she believes there has been a culture shift now and things have settled down. It takes a little longer because the institution is being very conservative about spending. On the hiring side, with respect to the bottleneck issue, again they are very uncomfortable with individuals making decisions that commit the University to long-term relationships that then have dollars behind them. That has not happened for about 29 months because it was strange for her to have individuals being able to make those commitments without running them by the vice chancellors. The hiring freeze was started because she needed to make sure she could manage the University with less payroll costs. She did not want to have the right side of the campus hiring only to have the left side of the campus have to lay off. So, there has been some coordination of hiring; it is all about controlling cost. It is all one budget, and if one person commits the institution to pay for something, whether buying or hiring, the other side of the institution has to come up with the dollars to make it all balance. People do not understand that once authority is given to a dean or director to hire someone, there is no micro-managing of who they hire. She never sees the paperwork again. What does come back to her office is from Affirmative Action, and that sign-off is done by the Associate Chancellor for Affirmative Action and Diversity (Linda McCabe-Smith). The Chancellor pointed out that it is all about the University’s relationship with the federal government. It is making sure there is a good faith effort being made to hire women and minorities, to make sure the candidate pools are diverse and that the decisions made are not biased but are ones that give opportunities. The other piece is an attempt to monitor this activity, particularly at the classified level, but also from A/P. If they are aware that someone’s job is at risk because of budget cuts or because there was a grant that was not renewed or a particular cut in a revenue-producing area–and they know there is a hire on the other side of campus–she and Jake Baggott often try to broker to see if the person who is going to lose her/his job can fit into that slot. They have been saving jobs this whole time. The campus does not necessarily get to go outside and recruit, but it is possible to get someone from within to do the work and save a job. Chancellor Cheng noted that in some ways, the University is pretty stable and is managing with less funds; there is no crisis across the campus. There are some things that are not getting done as fast, and there are people who are working harder but again, the campus needs to look at the way it uses technology.

Provost Nicklow commented that what he hears is that his office is delaying the process; however, his office does its best to turn things around, and nothing sits on his desk for more than 24 hours. L. McCabe-Smith also attempts to turn things around quickly. The Provost noted that there are no problems with affirmative action at this university. L. McCabe-Smith is running a tight ship, and that office needs to be thanked for doing such a good job. P. Eckert asked if there is a rule of thumb with respect to how long it takes at the Affirmative Action Office. There are rumors that things have sat in that office. Chancellor Cheng responded that they do not sit; what happens is that not all documents submitted to Affirmative Action are in a form that is ready for a decision. There is usually some iteration back and forth to get the information, so there tends to be a blame game if this happens. Provost Nicklow indicated that in probably in 8 out of 10 cases when it is sitting, it is actually being very thoroughly vetted. P. Eckert explained that an example of some of the calls she has received have to do with the length of time it takes to get permission to make an offer (after the interviews, etc.). It could take up to a month to get that back. Provost Nicklow indicated that if he gets the request to offer, it takes less than a couple of days. Chancellor Cheng added if it is taking a while, it is probably because L. McCabe-Smith is uncomfortable with the rationale, and she has gone back to the department and asked for more information.

K. Young commented on the HR process for submitting applications, suggesting the process would be more streamlined if applicants applied online versus to a person. Chancellor Cheng responded that some universities use PeopleSoft/PeopleAdmin where the whole process is automated. Others use a scan and upload to a D2L site for committees. All of those are steps that can be taken to improve and cut down on time. It takes a long time here to hire someone, so she understands the frustration. Provost Nicklow mentioned that the campus is working now to implement an enterprise management system, and it will be part of workflow. He believes it would present opportunities for those kinds of things. The real challenge has been the lack of infrastructure and network to properly utilize that system. So, that was the first step, and then the enterprise management solution will be the next step.

Chancellor Cheng expressed appreciation for the opportunity to openly discuss what is on the Council’s mind. She believes these are operational issues that they can work together and partner on to improve the campus. Provost Nicklow reminded A/P staff that the biggest thing they can do is to be positive. Everyone hears rumors, so never hesitate to contact his office or the Chancellor’s office to get the straight answer. Chancellor Cheng noted that during this discussion, there have been some speakers identified. She encouraged the Council to reach out to her or the Provost to get suggestions about who can tell them about this or that.

4. Minutes

The minutes of the Council meeting on December 19, 2012, were approved as presented.

5. Adoption of Meeting Agenda: P. Eckert moved to adopt the agenda as presented; seconded by L. Stettler. Motion carried.

6. Reports

6.1 Chair 
K. Jones reported that with the action that took place with A/P staff in the Foundation fund raising side last week, she received a number of phone calls from the fund raisers who were very concerned about not only the fact that their continuing appointments were converted to term but also how the announcement was made. The Executive Committee has attempted to do its best to find out answers to questions that people had. The situation emphasized the need to do some research about what is going on at other campuses. Some of the Foundation staff are going to attempt to do some research on whether it truly is the nature of the fund raising business to be on term contracts. It is always difficult to get an apples to apples comparison because some foundations are their own entity and some are university employees like here; so, care should be taken as to the kind of employee that will be studied. Additionally, there is a need to at least do some research on what is going on in the state of Illinois with continuing appointments. She has done some of that anecdotally, calling people from other campuses and asking if they are seeing any push-back on the continuing appointments because of budgetary reasons. The answers she has received so far do not show that, so that is good news. She wants to see what the Council’s reaction should be because it makes a difference if SIU is the first Illinois state university to make these types of changes or if they are the last. If they are first, then that information can be used in defense of what is taking place here. K. Jones indicated the Executive Committee is looking into gathering more data on what the world looks like so they are not relying on someone else’s representation that this is the state of the industry. P. Eckert noted it might behoove the Chancellor to do some management training.

6.2 Board of Trustees 
K. Jones reported the next Board meeting is February 28 in Edwardsville. It appears the schedule will be every other month, although there is no May meeting.

6.3 Human Resources (HR) - No eport.

6.4 Representatives to University Committees

Chancellor's Planning and Budget Advisory - No report.

6.5 Standing Committees

6.5a Executive Committee 
J. Geiger reported on the January 7 meeting: i) the main topic of conversation was what was going to happen with the pension issues, the status of the lame duck session and possible resolutions. It was mentioned that it would be wise to use resources like the State Universities Retirement System (SURS) and the State Universities Annuitants Association (SUAA) to stay updated on what is happening with pension reform; ii) there was much discussion on the conversion of continuing to term appointments at the Foundation. K. Jones also suggested working with the Public Policy Institute and Workforce Education to see if they had students who might be able to help do some research on A/P continuing appointments. C. Sarao noted it would be nice to work with a faculty member to give students credit for that work. K. Jones agreed, noting this can be discussed further when it comes up later in the agenda under the creation of an ad hoc committee. J. Geiger reported that the Executive Committee also discussed the creation of that ad hoc committee to address staff welfare issues, and discussed the appointments for the Mass Communication and Media Arts (MCMA) dean search committee.

6.5b Committee on Committees 
L. Stettler reported the committee was asked to submit names for the dean of the MCMA search committee. The Provost asked that the nominees be A/P staff who are employees in the MCMA area. The following individuals were submitted: Greg Petrowich, Broadcasting Service; Novotny Lawrence, Radio-Television; and Clare Mitchell, MCMA. However, it was later found that N. Lawrence is faculty; therefore, the committee is presenting the remaining two names for ratification. J. Gobert noted that the development officers in the colleges spend 90% of their time in the college, but their appointments are in the Foundation. As a result, they are never selected for dean searches because technically their appointments are not in the college. She believes the development officers would be good people to represent the colleges. K. Jones asked who the fund raiser is for MCMA (Ron Graves). The question was raised as to whether the committee would consider sending his name as the third choice. L. Stettler noted that the other issue is that the Provost asked for a diverse candidate pool. When the committee went down the list, N. Lawrence was the only person of color they could identify in the MCMA area who was A/P; the remaining two nominees are women. L. Stettler indicated she would keep R. Graves’s name for future consideration.Nominations were ratified.

6.5c Constituency Relations 
V. Brooks Wallin reported the committee will be meeting to discuss the spring constituency meeting. Also, the Staff Excellence Award Selection Committee is meeting on January 24 after evaluations have been submitted. She has asked for the number of applications and a breakdown on the number of civil service and A/P nominations over the past five to ten years. She will have that information for the next meeting.

6.5d Operating Paper - No report.

6.5e Staff Benefits and Welfare 
D. Castle reported the committee met once since the last Council meeting. The big topic was term versus continuing appointments. The committee will meet again before the next Council meeting. They have started the process of reviewing current policies to be sure they understand them.

7. Old Business

7.1 K. Jones reported that J. Geiger had prepared a summary of the town hall meetings that he forwarded to her, and she and J. Geiger were going to go back and forth to clean it up and put it in a more usable format. She would like to synthesize the summary down to a couple of pages so it can go out to everyone (including the Provost and Chancellor). K. Jones indicated she will get that done before the next meeting.

7.2 K. Jones reported that D. Castle had raised at a previous meeting the fact that the Council had combined the Staff Benefits and Staff Welfare Committees a few years back; While at the time it seemed like a good idea, the combined committee is now looking at several major issues. The thought is that it may be too much for the committee to handle, particularly if there is a JRB case or something else comes up. The question is whether the Council believes it is a good idea to create an ad hoc committee to study the continuing/term appointments issue; if so, then should it include some or all of the people on Staff Benefits and Welfare and what should be the committee’s charge. C. Sarao believes a committee should be created and that someone on the Benefits and Welfare Committee serve on it so they can report back to the Council. She noted that there are many people on campus who have been here a long time and who she thinks would be willing to serve on something like this given what everyone is hearing. D. Castle liked the idea of having a committee solely focused on that issue and also engaging others to be a part. His committee gets overwhelmed with all the things they could do. He also agreed that there should be one Council member on the committee, whether it is a member of his committee or not, to provide the communication back to the Council. R. Sievers asked what is the charge of the committee. D. Castle responded that they could collect and organize information and make recommendations back to the Council. K. Jones called for a motion to establish an ad hoc committee to study employment conditions for term and continuing A/P appointments at state and peer institutions. C. Sarao so moved; seconded V. Brooks Wallin. Motion carried.

D. Castle indicated the Committee on Committees should vet the names and present them to the Council for approval. C. Sarao asked if something could be put on the listserv to solicit interest, or should Council members make recommendations. K. Jones indicated they could do either. The Committee on Committees can decide the size of the committee. D. Castle indicated the Council ultimately will approve the names. C. Sarao believes there are some basic questions to ask such as how long has the person been here; are they term or continuing; and how long they have been on term or continuing. It was agreed to send out a solicitation which would include those questions. P. Eckert noted that a once committee is appointed, they will need to know their charge--that they are fact-finding to look at these issues and bring that back to the Council. D. Castle noted that in Council Operating Paper, it states that ad hoc committees are supposed to communicate regularly with the Council; seek Council advice and present a final report. He suggested those things should probably be added to the charge.

8. New Business

K. Jones called for volunteers to serve on the Ad Hoc Elections Committee in order to prepare for the Council’s spring elections. The Operating Paper calls for one volunteer from each sector, with the Council secretary acting as chair of the committee. A. Cummings-Hunter and J. Gobert volunteered to serve. Ad Hoc Elections Committee membership was approved.

9. Announcements - None.

10. Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 3:05 p.m.