Summary of May 9, 2005Staff Senate Meeting

The meeting was called to order at 2:35 PM.

Approval of April Minutes:

Deferred to the June Meeting

Officer Nominations:

Senator Loren Beard introduced the nominees and opened the floor for nominations.

All nominees were allowed 3 minutes to address the Senate.

Chair Nominees:Richard Brown

Bill Forman

Vice Chair Nominees:Beverly Daly

Brent Fryrear

Martyna Warren

Secretary/Trearurer Nominees:Bridget Burke

Brent Fryrear

Ken Nichter

Chair’s Report – Bill Forman

  • Chair Forman talked about the 30 year Celebration sponsored by the President, Provost and Vice President Owsley, saying what a nice, well-received time it was. However, on a percentage basis, more of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee came than did Staff Senators.
  • Trustees Report
  • Approved Larry Cook as the EVP Health Affairs
  • Approved naming the Library Auditorium for the Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao
  • Approved a Department of Urology
  • Approved the purchase of the Home of the Innocents property
  • Planning and Budget Committee: Looked at the projected budgetary needs for building maintenance across campuses, since maintenance has been deferred due to lack of state funding over the past several years. They also discussed the planned faculty salary catch up funds.
  • Big East Facilities Committee: Bill had met with the committee, but it has been replaced by the Governor’s Task Force on the Arena. First time in a long time that there has been a Governor who has expressed an interest in a U of L Arena.
  • Commission on Equal Opportunity: meets here about every 5 years.There is also a Black Staff Senate and Chair Forman expressed the idea that we should be working in concert to accomplish things for staff.
  • Cardinal Park Walk to Crawford Gym was a great success.
  • HRAC: received RFP feedback and we are down to 2 vendors with interviews scheduled.
  • Cardscare: this customer service initiative out of HR is a priority of President Ramsey. He wants improved customer service in campuses.
  • Monthly meeting with Larry Owsley and Julien Carter: discussed the Staff Grievance Policy, the RIF Policy, the Shared Leave Policy and the Staff Salary Distribution.
  • Executive Committee, Board of Trustees: There has been a survey taken in both Kentucky and the metro area with 400 respondents and it showed that U of L’s image is improving compared to the last three years. However, we are really not getting the word out to the state about U of L.
  • State of the Staff Report: We are making progress working with Richard Brown and Kim Noltemeyer hammering out the data. We are in the final stages of determining what we want out of the date. The next meeting is next Thursday. Bev Daly interjected that the report this time would only be a snapshot in time. We are batching the data for comparison so we can look at long-term trends.
  • Cardscare Team: If anyone is interested in finding out who their unit representative is, call or email Brian Buford in Human Resources. Each unit has to develop a plan university wide.

Faculty Senate Representative- Dr. Bob Staat.

  • Elections – the Faculty Senate does their elections a bit differently than the Staff Senate.

Chair – Bill Pierce

Vice Chair – Beth Boehm

Staff Senate Liaison – Bob Staat

  • Red Book Amendment passed on the Grievance Policy providing a 30 calendar day time to accept a grievance. That is an increase from the 10 work days previously in the policy.
  • Provost’s Report
  • There are two groups of consultants at the GraduateSchool evaluating what they should be doing so everyone is working from the same page.
  • Space Study – There is a study underway regarding classroom space as well as Faculty and Staff office space. This is an effort to look at U of L as research and education and trying to find a good balance within the limits of our resources.
  • Tuition/Fees – U of L had the lowest tuition increase in the state or with respect to our benchmark universities. Students are still affected and the Administration is doing the best they can to increase financial aid. There is a Student Health Services Fee ($15 - $20/semester) under consideration which would increase youth oriented benefits for health care such as psychiatry, dermatology, OB/Gyn, and Health education.
  • President’s Report
  • March and April state revenue figures are good. There may be a crunch next year, depending on continuing revenue increases or declines.
  • Aspirational Benchmarks – UK is challenging 3 aspirational benchmarks because they are the Flagship institutions of their states. They are UCLA, North Carolina, Chapel Hill and University of Washington, Seattle.
  • UK also had their feelings hurt over Pikeville Medical Center Health Care discussions. They were looking at U of L as a possible model.
  • Arena – they don’t pay for themselves. Dr. Ramsey wants to keep the public subsidy to as little as possible. A “Corridor of Champions” sports corridor down Central Avenue would be great for economic development.

Student Senate Representative – Justin Morehead

No Report

Standing Committee Business – Reports should be available on Docushare

Credentials & Nominations – Loren Beard

Ballots are due in this Friday for Staff Senate

There were two petitions to amend Staff Senate By-Laws read for a Secondreading:

1. CONCERNING:Pertaining to Article 1. Officers, Section 6 Duties of the Secretary/Treasurer.

BACKGROUND:Human Resources has changed the name and function of the University-wide Fringe Benefits Committee to the Human Resources Advisory Committee.

RATIONALE:To ensure that the Senate continues to have appropriate representation on all University-wide committees.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

The following items were changed and/or corrected to provide a clean working copy of

the by-laws:

PROPOSED: Petition to Amend the By-Laws pertaining to Article 1. Officers, Section 6 Duties of the Secretary/Treasurer. Add K “that the Secretary/Treasurer should represent the Staff Senate on the Human Resources Advisory Committee (HRAC)” .

“To be added in once final review is completed”.

FOR: 46AGAINST: 1ABSTAIN:0

2. CONCERNING:Pertaining to Article VII, Standing Committee of the Staff

Senate, Section 5c.Finance and Economic Welfare Committee. Also pertaining to Article VII, Standing Committee of the Staff Senate, 5c. Finance and Economic Welfare Committee Section 2. Composition.

BACKGROUND:Human Resources has changed the name and function of the University-wide Fringe Benefits Committee to the Human Resources Advisory Committee.

RATIONALE:To ensure that the Senate continues to have appropriate representation on all University-wide committees.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

The following items were changed and/or corrected to provide a clean working copy of

the by-laws:

Article VII, Standing Committee of the Staff Senate, Section 5c.Finance and Economic Welfare Committee. Delete the words “a member” in the second sentence and replace with “the chair”.

Also in Article VII, Standing Committee of the Staff Senate, 5c. Finance and Economic Welfare Committee, Section 2. Composition. Change the name of the University-wide committee from “University-wide Fringe Benefits Committee” to “Human Resources Advisory Committee”.

“To be added in once final review is completed”.

FOR: 48AGAINST: 0ABSTAIN:0

Executive Committee – Bill Forman

No Report

Finance and Economic Welfare – Ruby Backert

No Report

Plans and Policies – Beverly Daly

No Report

Sent recommendations to Julien Carter on the RIF and Grievance Policy

Staff Salary Database – the officers are working with HR on the RFP process as HR works to do our own research on staff salaries with a new database.

Athletic Board – meeting canceled

Services and Facilities – Angela Lewis-Klein

No Report

Staff Grievance – Teresa Yates

No Report

Staff Policy Review – Bridget Burke

They have a meeting May 17th.

University-wide Committees

Food Service Committee will not meet again until August.

Union Ad Hoc Committee had its first meeting for which the notes are posted on Docushare.

Academic Technology Committee meeting minutes will be posted asap.

No other reports -

Staff Senators are reminded to forward all reports for Standing Committees and University-wide Committees to the Staff Senate Secretary/Treasurer for inclusion on the Docushare site.

Vice President for Business Affairs - Larry Owsley

  • Mr. Owsley expressed his thoughts on the Senate’s 30thAnniversary Celebration. He said it was a nice reception that was well done.
  • Budget/Planning – U of L buildings are aging and require maintenance on heat, plumbing, electrical issues, etc., but there has been little funding for maintenance from the state. Mr. Owsley is working to get state funding. We need money to put into facilities, but this is one of many issues he is working on.
  • Sexual Harassment training. There has been some differentiation between faculty and staff. Currently, new hires (faculty and staff) are given 30 days to complete the on-line training. Staff Senate would like to see all Faculty take the training. Ten staff members have not taken the training and have been notified that they must do so in order to receive their salary increase.
  • Salary Amount/Salary Distribution – The President considered the salary increase and could only provide a maximum of 3.5%. A big component of the budget is based on tuition. With our tuition increase of 9.5% and a possible student health fee, we are well under 10%. EKU raised tuition 23%, WKU raised tuition 17% and both are considering rolling back part of t heir tuition increases. The Council on Postsecondary Education could also roll back tuition and take back the authority to set increases and do them all centrally out of Frankfort. The governor called each University and asked to keep tuition increases under 10%. The salary distribution method was chosen because all institutions in the state have some part of a salary increase based on merit. The Trustees have asked in the past to continue merit-based increases. The Administration realizes that performance appraisals are an issue and there is not a perfect system, and HR is working to find something better. A solid merit system is what the Administration and Trustees want. He asked for Senator’s feedback and promised the take the feedback back to the Provost and President. Senators took the opportunity to provide lively discussion on performance appraisals, scoring, supervisor training, the thought that people cannot achieve “superior”, politics, favoritism, and reality as to how flawed the performance appraisal system at U of L is perceived to be. Staff also asked why we were asked to provide a recommendation but it was not taken. Mr. Owsley pointed out that both he and the Staff Senate are advisory.
  • The question came up about a 3.5% raise and increased parking costs. The Senator did not understand why Staff got minimal raises while others receive bonuses. Mr. Owsley acknowledged that the President receives an incentive bonus as do coaches in Athletics.
  • A Senator asked about Supervisors being required to take appraisal training every 3-4 years. Another Senator suggested that they all be required to take it at least once! Mr. Owsley committed to focusing on that this year.
  • Another Senator suggested that at least two people should review a performance appraisal.
  • A Senator said it is not a fair comparison to compare a 3.5% raise with a Parking permit cost increase…red permits are only going up about $15 a year.
  • A Senator said that the concern he kept hearing was that “how does merit distribution correlate to scores”? Since there is not a correlation, it creates a feeling of unfairness. How do we better quantify performance? There was also a discussion of increasing funding of vacant positions rather than giving raises to current employees. It was mentioned that the across the board increase we advocated was based on a “satisfactory or above” appraisal. Since the evaluation process is perceived to be flawed, employees feel demeaned.
  • A Senator pointed out that the evaluation period is whether or not we have done the best job for the past year. What was our productivity for that year?
  • A Senator asked again why we were asked if our recommendation was not going to be followed…Mr. Owsley said that the President and Provost ask for advice from many different groups. The Senator wanted to express her displeasure that other groups advice was taken on an issue that affects Staff personally. If the VPs and Deans made that decision on our raises, why were their views more valuable than ours? We were not asking for much…3.5% across the board based on a satisfactory appraisal.
  • Another Senator wanted to again emphasize training. There has to be more objectivity on performance. HR is working on revising the Performance Appraisal system and the HRAC and FEW are involved in the process.
  • Someone brought up that UBM’s are preparing raise information. Mr. Owsley reiterated that he valued this feedback and he will carry it to the Provost and President.
  • A Senator commented that most Staff lacked the tools to make a recommendation on the tuition increase. It places us in an adversarial position since our raise is also somewhat dependent on the tuition increase. Mr. Owsley said it was a point well taken.
  • A Senator asked if it is still mandatory for units to send out a letter detailing the annual salary increase. Mr. Owsley believed that was still the case.
  • A Senator asked about a sidewalk on the old Parkway Field site. It can be dangerous walking if there are two trucks going to Kentucky Trailer. Mr. Owsley reported that Brook Street is a City Street. The Senator said that even striping the street or walking area to indicate lanes would be a help. Mr. Owsley will investigate that.
  • Mr. Owsley thanked the Senators for their candor and said he will do his best to communicate it.

Associate Vice President of Human Resources- Julien Carter

  • Mr. Carter introduced Jennifer Church, the new Pharmacy Consultant and expressed the excitement that HR feels about having her. She will be working with Pharmacy RFP and on customer service issues. Pharmacy is the fastest growing cost and Jennifer will be available to answer issues through
  • Mr. Carter also wanted to express his appreciation as HR bids farewell to Melissa Long Shuter as she takes her new job in Mr. Owsley’s office on June 1st. He thanked her for her leadership during her time in HR.
  • Mr. Carter received the RIF and Staff Grievance Policy recommendations, and will consider those with the Shared Leave policy with the different decision makers including the HRAC. There is a sunset provision in the Shared Leave Policy so it will be reviewed soon.
  • Health Plan Administrator RFPs are in and finalist interviews are scheduled. Plan design discussions with the HRAC is set for June.
  • There are a number of RFPs out –.
  • Pharmacy RFP
  • Group and Optional Supplemental Life
  • Vision
  • Dental
  • Long-term Disability
  • Long-term Care
  • Short-term disability
  • Home and Auto Insurance
  • Performance Appraisal Pilots – Brian Buford is working on this and there should be a model for review in a few weeks.
  • Individual Issues – If Senators have a constituent who needs assistance on individual issues, Mr. Carter is opening a time for Senators to make an appointment with him. Schedule appointments with Ashley Terrell at 852-6538 or by email.

There were no questions for Mr. Carter.

Other Business

There was not any other business.

The meeting adjourned at 4:22 PM

Staff Senate Officers for 2004-05

Chair – Bill Forman 852-0996

Vice Chair – Bev Daly 852-8360

Sec/Treas. – Brent Fryrear 852-2956

Senate Office - Robin Emond-Durham – 852-6713

Web:

Staff Senate Collection on

Docushare: