Approved Minutes For Meeting On October 16, 2013

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Date: October 16, 2013

Program:

1.The meeting was called to order at 1:03 p.m. by the Chair, Kathy Jones. Visitors and guests were welcomed.

2. Roll Call

Members Present:  Todd Bryson, Don Castle, Jon Geiger, Kathy Jones, Colleen Kuczynski, Don Patton, Rod Sievers

Members Absent without Proxy: Jeannie Killian, Angela Cummings-Hunter, Jill Gobert, Matt Sronkoski all of these members were attending training.

Proxies:  Jon Geiger for Charlotte Sarao, Kathy Jones for Valerie Brooks Wallin

Visitors and Guests:  Michelle Rushing and Luisa Ballester-Concepcion.

3. Minutes

The minutes of the Council meeting on August 21, 2013, motion to approve by Don Castle, second by Rod Sievers, minutes approved as presented.

4. Adoption of Meeting Agenda: Todd Bryson moved to adopt the agenda as presented; seconded by Jon Geiger. Motion carried.

5. Reports

5.1 Chair 
Charlotte Sarao has been appointed to the President’s Search Advisory Committee. Constituency heads met on September 30th. It had been quite a while since the committee met and everything reported on has already happened. Chancellor reported that this year’s faculty numbers are within 17 of last years. Move-in schedule for the new Student Services Building was discussed and by now two floors should have already moved in. Ribbon cutting is scheduled for weekend of October 19th. Third floor was staged and moved in by that weekend and are hoping the 4th floor should be in Christmas break. Pretty impressive building - stop in and check it out. Remodeling Woody Hall would be next. Not sure who is going into Woody Hall a lot had changed since original plans. Michele rushing added that School of Social Work is to go into Pulliam Hall on the second floor. Next constituency head meeting will be November 20th. K. Jones congratulated the Constituency Relations committee and Rhonda on their hard work on the luncheon. It went really well, food was good, speaker was good and crowd was pretty decent – always wish we could get more AP Staff to join us. The committee deserved a round of applause. Lastly, K. Jones wanted to know if anyone on the Council could offer Rhonda help with upgrading the current Website to the current template. Other Constituency Groups are updated. Need some help with getting started on the revisions. T. Bryson offered Kyle Lake’s name from the Rec Center as a possibility and D. Castle offered Beth Alongi’s name. The pages are in Dreamweaver and there have been problems with the upgrade of computer in the constituency office. Jones also noted the photos on the website are outdated. They are from two councils ago – who took them and where did they come from? It was decided that Steve Buhman might possibly be able to take updated photos if needed.

5.2 Board of Trustees 
 No report – next meeting will be November 14th in Edwardsville.

5.3 Human Resources (HR) 
Tracy Bennett was not able to attend the meeting but Jones reported that the last flu shots will be offered on Friday, October 18 from 8:30 – 5 p.m. in Alumni Lounge in the Rec Center. First round not well attended.   HR  wanted K. Jones to report that some of the salary increases have been uploaded with the reminder uploaded next month - November 1. Retroactive pay will be sent out as soon as possible. D. Castle added that the new salaries and retroactive pay will have to be done in this tax year so it should be done fairly soon.

5.4 Representatives to University Committees

5.4a Chancellor’s Planning and Budget Advisory Committee– Michelle RushingMichelle Rushing presented and discussed her report.  She had hand-outs for everyone.(Attachment A) Chancellor gave some of her updates. The rest of the meeting was devoted to the strategy for budget reductions and appropriations model.

5.4b Student Center Advisory Board - Jeannie Killian 
L. Concepcion gave her report from the September 27th Student Center Advisory Committee.  See Attachment B for full report. 

5.5 Standing Committees

5.5a Executive Committee - Jon Geiger
 J. Geiger reported the committee discussed the Constituency Relations Luncheon and made final decisions. The committee also discussed who would be attending the regular meeting from University Committees. The Executive Committee talked about the Chancellor coming to the November 20th meeting and the council would ask her what the council could do as a constituency to help her out in different situations. K. jones remarked that she had indeed contacted the Chancellor’s office and asked her to come and tell the Council want they could do as a group to help move the university forward as opposed to a question and answer format. The JRB was discussed and who would be the contact person to address the council.  S. Buhman was the contact and is no longer on the JRB.  Also need to train the current committee in case of a hearing. D. Castle agreed to take the lead on getting JRB trained and straightened out.  D. Castle showed spreadsheets from 2012 and 2013 stats on the continuing and term appointments.  Next meeting of Executive Council will be on Tuesday, November 12th at 2:30 p.m.

5.5b Committee on Committees - Charlotte Sarao
C. Sarao was unable to attend the meeting but sent a short report via email. The Committee forwarded the following two names for possible service on the Presidential Search Advisory Committee:

Charlotte Sarao, Assist Dean, College of Agricultural Sciences
Rod Sievers, Assist to the Chancellor, Media Relations
Charlotte Sarao was notified of her appointment by email.

5.5c Constituency Relations - Rod Sievers
R. Sievers reported that the luncheon went well and everyone in attendance seemed to like the food and speaker. Sievers added that another one of their goals for this year was to address the Listserv so that when emails come to AP Staff it will be recognizable and will not say it’s from Rhonda; instead it will say from AP Staff Council. So we will try to figure out why and get it changed. J. Geiger brought up the fact that the caterer of the luncheon has not contacted us for the second half of their bill.  Both Geiger and Rhonda have attempted to contact them for payment.  The council made the decision to pay the bill with some possible discount based on late delivery and provide the caterer with constructive criticism so that some items and tasks could be performed better next time.

5.5d Operating Paper - Kathy Jones
D. Patton and K. Jones met on Oct. 9th. They began going over the list that D. Castle received from HR to see about forming different sectors within the AP Staff employees to make a bigger council. K. Jones discussed that AP Staff needs a bigger council maybe 20 members to help serve the constituencies better. They have to come up with a natural combination to come up with sectors. They are going to make charts and try to figure out what to do with the units. It was noted that when the by-laws were changed in 2010, there was originally some language in there that said we didn’t want to include people that were within two reporting lines of the Chancellor. That was taken out, but we are left with, “what do you do with these people?” This has to be figured out to get the list down to the right number of people and how big the council should be. K. Jones asked the Council if 19 or 20 is big enough, but 25 is too big. Different ideas were 4-5 on each committee; more council members; splitting Staff Benefits and Welfare up again??  The committee will keep looking at this and coming back to the council with questions and work on a plan. 

5.5e Staff Benefits and Welfare - Don Castle
 D. Castle talked about the JRB Committee. It was clear that they didn’t have a chair or elect a chair elect. He admitted he couldn’t find anyone to train the JRB last year and kind of got lost in that structure. So Castle is working on setting up a training session for committee this year. Then they can collectively select a chair and that name can be forwarded to the council. That committee is still missing one member, since T. Harfst declined to be on committee. Committee on Committees will need to fill that position. The committee requested the spreadsheets from HR to take a look at the term and continuing appointments. Castle said he did some quick sortings on the list and there appear to be 7 less AP Staff on the current list. Still flat for the most part. He then did a sort by Term and Continuing, last year there were majority of continuing and minority of term contracts.  This year the majority is Term contracts and the minority is Continuing, with the difference being about 52 more Term contracts.  The committee will sort the lists more and continue to look at all this information. Castle said he’s not sure what all the data means and how good the lists are so they will work on that as well. K. Jones asked if a faculty person becomes a chair – “Do they retain their vacation benefits that they received as a faculty member?” C. Kuczynski remarked that they get a payout – same as everyone else. Then how do they get counted?? Castle said they are one or the other – not both.  T. Bryson asked if interim comes into play when talking about the positions that are both faculty / AP Staff.  There will be more discussion on the questions surrounding the data.

6. Old Business

No Old Business
  
7. New Business - None
K. Jones welcomed Colleen Kuczynski to the Council.

8. Announcements

Next Happy Hour will be on Wednesday, November 13th at 4:30 p.m. at Italian Village.  T. Bryson brought up a question about maybe having a booth at the tailgate, as an organization or maybe a basketball game.  If too late for this year maybe think about it for next year. Council felt that was a good idea.   This would be a good way to inform AP Staff of the council and give out information for more involvement.  D. Castle remarked that this weekend is Homecoming – 10:00 a.m. Parade; 2:00 Game.

9. Adjournment

Motion was made by Don Patton and seconded by Don Castle to adjourn. The meeting adjourned at 2:20 p.m.