Approved Minutes For Meeting On March 19, 2008

Date: March 19, 2008 

Program:

2. Roll Call

Members Present: Tuesday Ashner, Carla Coppi, Patty Cosgrove, Mike Cubley, Paulette Curkin, JP Dunn, Dave Hahn, Gabriele Hoffmann, Heidi Jung, Cordy Love, Lisa McKennedy, Dana McKenzie, Barbara Nowack, Sandra Rhoads, Mary Stammer, Allison Sutphin, Sharon Walters.

Members Absent: Phil Bankester.

Proxies: Paulette Curkin for Don Castle, Patty Cosgrove for Brad Dillard.

Visitors and Guests: Sarah Merideth, Marge Selinger.

3. Minutes

The minutes of the February 20, 2008, meeting were approved as presented.

4. Adoption of Meeting Agenda: JP Dunn moved to approve the agenda; seconded by G. Hoffmann. Motion carried.

5. Reports

5.1 Chair 
T. Ashner reported: i) the constituency heads met with President Poshard and his staff on March 17, and he briefed them before putting out his statement regarding Chancellor Treviño paid administrative leave. She met with Vice President Haller earlier in the day to discuss the Chancellor's situation further. She was told that the President and Chancellor will meet to discuss the concerns brought forth. The President will then decide whether to retain the Chancellor or whether to move forward with a just cause dismissal. If just cause is found, then they will go into arbitration; ii) election of A/P Staff Council officers will be coming up soon. She suggested the next Council consider a change in its operating papers to allow members to serve two consecutive terms. She noted that by the third year, members are only just starting to understand the workings of the Council and the University; iii) she talked with the president of the civil service union and was told the hold-up in negotiations is salary increases. The offer from the administration was a five year contract, with a pay increase the first year and then no guaranteed increases for the remaining four years.

On another matter, L. McKennedy asked if there was an easier way for those in Springfield to return ballots/surveys to Carbondale without having to pay postage. She suggested the possibility of having a contact in Springfield that could collect the ballots/surveys and return them all at once. T. Ashner responded that the Elections Committee could look into this issue.

5.2 Board of Trustees 
T. Ashner reported on the February 28 Board meeting: i) Mario Moccia gave a presentation on the academic status of student athletes. Also, Athletics has just completed and passed its 10-year NCAA external review; ii) in 2007, general SIUC students had a 42% graduation rate, with athletes having 50%; iii) in the Finance Committee, it was reported that there are $90 million in pledges, and 140 new endowed funds--109 of those are for scholarships; iv) Vice Chancellor McCurry was praised by the Trustees for his work in making the comprehensive capital campaign move forward. There were kudos also for Board Chair Roger Tedrick, who has been raising money; v) officers were elected for the year. R. Tedrick was re-elected chair; Ed Hightower as vice chair and John Simmons as secretary. Committee appointments were also made; vi) there was an academic program review; vii) President Poshard reported he has been spending a lot of time in Springfield working on a capital bill. He discussed possible privatization of the lottery and the possibility of a gas tax increase to help fund a capital bill. He reported his office has been restructured. John Davis will oversee internal affairs and Brian Chapman will oversee external affairs; viii) the new emergency text messaging system was announced. In other business, T. Ashner reported that under the public comments portion of the meeting: i) Laraine Wright, retired SIUC A/P, pointed out that there are 29 people who hold the most highly-respected jobs at the SIU level. Of those 29, 27 are men who earn [a total of] more than $4.7 million in salary; and two are women who, together, earn less than $200,000. She presented a comprehensive report on the need to look at minorities and women in these higher positions. She wanted to bring to the Board's attention that the chancellor and president are making no effort to hire females in higher positions, and when it does happen, the salaries are not equitable; ii) SIUC Faculty Senate President Peggy Stockdale spoke out about the salary increases in the President's office and asked the Board to remove it from the omnibus motion. One of her key points was to ask why the President's office is allowed to operate under different rules than the rest of the University. She pointed out that there was no affirmative action oversight in the recent hires, and equal opportunity laws were not followed. President Poshard was quoted in the Southern Illinoisanas saying the raises are comparable to those of an assistant dean. P. Stockdale brought to his attention that his statement was not accurate; iii) there were some students who spoke out about the differential tuition being proposed by the College of Business. The Board appeared to favor the proposal; however, T. Ashner expressed concern about who would do the work of writing the program. Records and Registration is in the middle of implementing Banner. Also, if Business is allowed to charge differential tuition, then other colleges will want to do it as well. [The College of Business] also wants to charge students for taking a minor. She noted that doing so would open the door for every academic unit to charge students for taking minors in their colleges.

5.3 Human Resources (HR) - None.

5.4 Representatives to University Committees

5.4a Naming University Facilities - Sarah Meridetht 
S. Merideth reported the committee met once since her last report in October. The new chair is Gary Kolb, Interim Dean of the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts. There were no proposals in front of the committee at its October meeting, but they did approve some guidelines for descriptive naming (such as 1 Enterprise Way), which were sent to the Chancellor for approval. She noted that the descriptive names would not prohibit granting an honorific name at a later time.

5.4b Ombudsman Advisory - Patty Cosgrove/Mike Cubley 
P. Cosgrove reported the committee has only met once, and it was during the fall. She distributed and discussed her report (see appendix 1).

5.4c Student Center Advisory 
L. Campbell submitted her written report (included as appendix 2). H. Jung asked about the status of the food service contract. T. Ashner responded that there is a Request for Proposal (RFP), and the Student Center is taking bids. S. Rhoads indicated there are only two bids, Chartwell and one other. P. Curkin added that a decision is supposed to be made by the end of the school year.

5.5 Standing Committees

5.5a Executive Committee 
A. Sutphin reported the committee discussed those issues reviewed earlier by T. Ashner. They also reviewed the agenda and the minutes from the previous meeting.

5.5b Ad Hoc Elections 
P. Cosgrove (for D. Castle) reported she, D. Castle and C. Coppi met on March 12 to count nomination ballots for the A/P Staff Council. The slate of candidates for each sector is as follows:

School of Medicine (1 position open) 
Allison Sutphin, Barbara Cray Lokaitis, Rhonda Seeber

Academic Affairs (1 position open) 
Rebecca Woodhull, Cordy Love

General (2 positions open) 
Mike Reiman, Rod Sievers

Student Affairs (1 position open) 
Amy Rose

Ballots have been mailed, with a return date of April 2; they will be counted on April 3.

5.5c Committee on Committees 
S. Rhoads reported the committee was asked for a representative for the Signage Committee. The committee submitted for approval the nomination of Jon Geiger, Evaluation and Developmental Center.Motion carried. S. Rhoads reported that P. Curkin is currently a member of the [Emeritus and Annuitant Association]. Since P. Curkin will soon be retiring, she suggested the A/P Staff Council might want to appoint an unofficial representative to the Association to allow the Council to keep abreast of their activities. P. Cosgrove nominated JP Dunn to serve; seconded by P. Curkin. Motion carried. In other business, S. Rhoads reported there were nine A/P hired in February, totaling approximately 56 new A/P on campus this year.

5.5d Constituency Relations 
P. Curkin reported the committee has selected April 30 for the spring constituency recognition event to be held in the Old Main Lounge from 3:00-4:30 p.m.

5.5e Operating Paper 
C. Love reported the committee counted the ballots for the Operating Paper change, and all the proposed changes were approved. The next step is to send the changes to the Chancellor for final approval.

5.5f Staff Benefits 
D. Hahn reported the committee met on March 7 to finalize its list of questions for HR. The committee then met with M. Selinger on March 11, and she provided several handouts and answered questions. There were some questions that required her to compile data, so she is in the process of doing so. D. Hahn indicated the plan is to have a list of what the committee considers critical issues and a proposed plan of action. H. Jung indicated there may be issues that the committee only needs to inform or clarify for staff. One of her ideas was to, once a month or once a semester, put on the website some interesting information about current policies on which staff may not be aware. T. Ashner suggested an FAQ that would not necessarily have to be updated every time; or, if the questions raised by the committee are beneficial, then those could be used.

5.5g Staff Welfare 
JP Dunn reported he has received approximately 50 responses so far to the survey. He has not looked through them all, but those he did read had some good comments, and there are staff who asked for more information. The committee will respond directly to those who requested it, and the others will either be posted on the website or the announcement listserv. There are questions about term and continuing contracts and several negative comments on time reporting and ethics training (but the committee cannot do anything about those). JP Dunn reported the committee will compile the data and bring it back to the Council for review.

M. Selinger reported that Carol Fisher is the new trainer for performance evaluations. C. Fisher has indicated that training will likely start up again around the end of April. At this point, she is telling people they can use either the new or the old form because people really need to be trained if they want to use the new form. C. Fisher has indicated there will be a lot of advertising for the training sessions.

6.1 H. Jung reported the Ad Hoc Website Committee is continuing work on the website. P. Cosgrove commented that she experienced difficulty when attempting to find information on the Computing Advisory Committee. She realized there is no link from the A/P Staff Council page to any of the university-wide committees. She asked if this issue would be addressed. H. Jung responded that the committee is currently working on listing those committees and [their A/P reps]. Adding a link to the committees' websites would be easy to do if they have one.

6.2 C. Coppi asked about the recent spring meeting of the State Universities Annuitant Association. P. Curkin responded that she attended the meeting, which was held on campus. The major issue discussed was to get the word out about voting against a constitutional convention. If one is held, it is possible that unwelcome changes could be made to employee pensions. She noted that membership to the Emeritus and Annuitant Association is $27 annually. Current, as well as retired employees, can join.

8. Announcements - None.

9. Adjournment