Tulane University
Staff Advisory Council
Minutes of Thursday, March 10, 2011
ATTENDEES / ATTENDEESOFFICERS / UPTOWN CAMPUS
Gwen Chavez, Chair / Present / Kathy Bourgeois / Excused
Laurie Orgeron, Vice Chair / Present / Sheri Bouyelas /
Present
Rob Platner, Election Coordinator / Present / Mike Griffith / ExcusedLinda Cantero, Recording Secretary / Excused / Michael Harrison /
Present
Miriam Espinosa, Corresp.Secretary
/ Present /Alysia Loshbaugh
/ PresentAaron Martin, Member At Large / Suzanne Lossi /
Absent
Simon Dorfman / AbsentDOWNTOWN CAMPUS / Lisa O’Dwyer / Present
Tanya Ambrose /
Absent
/ Patrick Randolph / PresentSusan Barrera, Immediate Past Chair / Present / Whitney Richards /
Present
Linzi Conners / Present / Kimberly Vega /Present
Carol Ardeneaux / Present / Judy Vitrano / ExcusedMichael Heisser / Present
Tami Jenniskens / Excused
Christopher Lane / Present
Merisa Pasternak / Absent / Ronald Cram (proxy) / Absent
Allan Slatkin /
Excused
/ Joseph Halm (proxy) / AbsentKay Leger / Present / Ryan Henne (proxy) / Absent
Patsy Stewart / Present / Jane Johnston (proxy) / Present
Shirley Tubre / Excused / Kady Weingart (proxy) / Absent
Anita Kivell / Present / Karissa Page (proxy)
NORTHSHORE
Scott Goings / Present / INVITED GUESTS AND VISITORS
Corrie West / Excused / Cheryl Avera / Present
Desiree Waguespack / Present* / Scott Cowen / Present
Rebecca Conwell / Present
* Via teleconference
All Officers are serving the Staff Advisory Council term 2010 – 2011
Call to Order:
3:30 on Thursday April 14, 2011
I.Review and Approval of the Minutes
Review and Approval of Minutes Passed.
II. WFMO Liaison
Cheryl Avera Director of Compensation and Records is here to take any question back to WFMO.
Question was brought up regarding the pilot program instituted downtown concerning absences. If this is a pilot program, when will it end? It has been going on for the past 20 years. Also, there is the same Director for Facilities for Uptown and Downtown, so why is it not a pilot program across both campuses?
One staff member asked why they stopped having card services accept calls or email to put money on their card to be able to charge at LBC, Bruff Commons or wherever you would like to go. You can put cash on your card, but they no longer accept calls to put money on the card and pay it like a student would. They want to know why this stopped. Cheryl said that she would check with Doug Olsen and find out.
Also why can’t students charge at the hair salon or barber shop if they can charge at the bookstore.
One representative said that they had a conversation with someone in Software Development who had worked on the processes for WFMO and when it came to using employee Social Security Numbers, they pointed out that the new Banner System has new ID numbers instead of Social Security Numbers which can be a security risk. They said the WFMO management team did not want to use the Wave ID numbers. An example was brought up that students working for Tulane used the Wave ID numbers instead of their Social Security Numbers. There was a quick discussion among the representatives and the final determination was that Payroll used the Social Security Numbers instead of Wave ID numbers.
A staff member asked one of the representatives if there were any plans for Graduate Student Housing besides Papillon.
III. Report of the Chair, Gwen Chavez
The issue of parking on the Uptown Campus – especially with the Construction Workers was brought up at the University Senate Meeting. Tony Lorino was asked to address this at the meeting and said that he had received notice from SAC as well regarding this issue. I spoke to TUPD and they said that Tony came down there and said that from now on, guest passes are for use in Diboll and Rosen lot only. This is for all guest passes. The passes that are now sold will include a stamp on them stating that Diboll and Rosen are the only places that they are valid. If your department has purchased guest passes in the past and still have some without the stamp, they are still valid everywhere except reserved, handicap and meter spots. A representative brought up that no memo was sent regarding this and I replied that it was just implemented this week. People are being notified of this change when they purchase the passes. There was a drastic reduction in the amount of guest passes sold with the new stamps on them especially with the construction workers.
At the request of a SAC member, I emailed Jack Leblanc regarding advance notice of when spaces would be coned off so employees have the opportunity to come early.
Susan Barerra and I met with Anne Banos and Rebecca Conwell, the new Advisor for SAC, and found that we are not guaranteed a budget every year for SAC. It is at the graciousness of President Cowen that we received $4,000 last year. We did not receive it this year, but it is in the budget for next year. We should thank him for this donation to SAC since the Senate does not even receive a budget. We may not be able to have a Family Fun Day every year. The thing for discussion for next year would be if we want to partner with someone, spend less than the $4,000 or have it every other year.
Question was brought up that since there are not as many faculty during the summer, can Law Road and Engineering Road turn to Green parking instead of Blue parking for the summer months.
IV. Officer Reports
A. University Senate
President Cowen gave a report about the implementation of the DMC model, the budget was getting finalized, Tulane Empowers Campaign and how that was going. He mentioned that Athletics would have the full complement of teams back and it was a good thing. They still have on the table what was going to go on with football and it was ensured that it would be played. He said that they were thinking about building a third residential college so they are looking into that. They are going to make a large investment in IT infrastructure hardware which would be around five million dollars. He talked about Undergraduate admissions having 565 deposits when they only had about 477 at this time last year. There could possibly be an incoming class of over 1600 students which is something that they were trying not to do. They wanted to be at 1450. The Provost reported on the new Dean for the A.B. Freeman School of Business would be coming soon and the SACS Accreditation went exceptionally well.
B. Board of Administrators
Basically the same things were mentioned in the University Senate and the Board of Administrators meeting. The President did talk about a plan for the future of Athletics, especially football. Talked of converting Football practice field into a stadium – need an outside donor. Would not just be a football field, would be used as a community asset with Friday night football, high school or middle school soccer games and convocations. Add 2 new women’s sports – Sand Volleyball and Bowling. Have the Bowling Coach, she’s from England and home field will be Rock N Bowl Lanes. Still looking for Sand Volleyball home court.
As far as enrollment goes, this was the first year that Louisiana was not the number one state for enrolled applicants, New York was the #1 state that had students accepted. Louisiana was #2 followed by New Jersey.
Anne Banos gave a description of what Administrative Services does for students and employees as far as the different departments. Also discussed the Staff Appreciation Survey results which can be found on the WFMO website. She also said that at any given time, there can be upwards of 500 people on a tuition waiver during the year.
A SAC representative asked if the 500 on tuition waivers were the incoming Freshman. It was stated that some may be incoming Freshman, but some are also employees.
V. University Senate Committee Reports
1. Benefits
No report.
2. Budget Review
No report.
3. Information Technology
No report.
4. Equal Opportunity
Trying to create a place where immediate information is known. This would be a place for Student Friendly Resources, Staff Friendly Resources, Faculty Friendly Resources, Graduate Student Friendly Resources. For example, if you didn’t know where to look for Student Resources, there are alot of layers that you would need to go through in order to find something. Some of the things discussed were in regards to diversity, the lactation centers - people had been asking for those and the committee received feedback from these centers. This is the type of information they are looking at and can have written documents that they can leave it in the Dean’s offices, the information booth, dorms, etc. and or a link that might say Student Friendly Resources. They will work on a survey, and then do a needs assessment, best practices that will be presented to the Provost with recommendations.
5. Physical Facilities
No Meeting
6. Social Issues
No meeting.
VI. SAC Sub-Committees
1. Election Committee
We have 34 total members not including proxies. 18 Uptown, 13 Downtown and 3 from the Northshore. We will need 6 people for Uptown, 5 people for Downtown and 1 for the Northshore. We want to get started on this around the end of April for nominations and have the elections around May 10th or 12th so we can have the results by the next meeting. I have a list of who is rolling off and who was elected for a 2 or 3 year term in 2009. The 2 year term people are rolling off and can be elected again. I also have the list of people elected in 2010, so they have 2 more years. We will need to elect about 12 people.
In June we have the officer elections so start thinking about if you would like to be an Officer.
It was suggested to Rob that he should email the members that are rolling off and let them know if they can run again since all of them may not be present at the meeting.
A question was brought up regarding voting for officer elections. Officer Elections are held at the June meeting. Nominations can be emailed prior to the meeting as well as taken on the floor that day. Any elected representative can run for an Officer position. Proxies are not eligible to become Officers. If a representative that was elected this year was an elected representative previously, they could also run for an Officer position. The responsibilities for each Officer position can be found in the Constitution on the SAC website.
2. Electronic Technology and Information
No Meeting.
3. Staff Appreciation
Corrie is not here, so I will go over the results of the Family Fun Day:
Total number of people who signed up was 1,074 and 410 people came out. This is about 38%. I sent out a survey asking for comments on how we could improve:
#1 answer was to have chili for the hot dogs.
-reception desk at the gate
-Have more things for employees, not kids like Bingo for prizes or races – relays, 3 legged, water balloon toss, etc.
-Music more entertaining and also for kids – chicken dance, electric slide, cha-cha
-Free Health Screenings
-not much room for improvement from a few people
-more hands-on like Home Depot
-Too long of a day if also going to the game, make it a separate event
- Have it in the Fall – we can’t – we use the football practice field
- Have it on the Northshore or Audubon Park – Football practice field is free. We also had food donated and it wouldn’t be possible to have them drive that far.
Fingerprinting & Face Painting always had a long line. We had 3 people doing face painting.
Overall was a great success and when asked if they would recommend to other employees, majority said that they already have.
It was brought up in the meeting that there was not enough shaded areas and maybe we should get more tents. This was something that was already put in the survey before any questions were asked.
Thank you cards were sent out to everyone who donated things to us.
Kelly Venable Carroll really did a great job in getting the food for us.
We spent a little over $4,000 but that included the Giveaways from last year. We have 20 frisbees left. This would be an added expense as well as more tents. People thought it was a great idea to bring your own chair, so we may not need to order as many chairs next time. Someone else said that they could make a couple of CD’s if we could get speakers from Technology Services people so we wouldn’t need the DJ.
The year before, we spent $5,000 so we did better this year, but the fact that we had the food donated helped tremendously.
4. Staff Issues
. Nothing to report
5. Health and Wellness
43 employees participated in the March webinar – “Taking Care of Your Health Care”
April seminar – “How to Prevent Musculoskeletal Disorders in the Workplace” will be held:
Tuesday, April 12 – Uptown LBC room 202
Thursday, April 14 – Downtown, Tidewater room 105
Thursday, April 21 – TNPRC Auditorium
May Webinar will be “Smoking Cessation” on May 19th and May 24th
Just wrapped up the Dr. Gourmet 3 week series at the Downtown campus – 72 employees registered to attend. I will have actual participation figues at the next meeting.
Living Well programs ending soon. We have 161 participants. 28 randomly selected participants that recorded numbers for at least 60 days will win $100 gift cards.