Staff Senate Minutes
October 15, 2003
The Staff Senate met on October 15, 2003 at 2pm in the Library. Senate members in attendance included Kathy Cole, Mark Trout, Houston Taylor, Gaye Calhoun, Vera Camp, Kellye Ogle, Keli Honza, Tommy Slaughter, Cledis Stuart, Robert Jones, Charles Honza, Jason Goodrich, and Essie Moore.
Approval of Minutes
The meeting was called to order. There was a motion by Cledis Stuart to accept the minutes of the September 10th meeting with a second by Gaye Calhoun. Motion passed.
Unfinished Business
The discussion on Questions for the Administration resumed with the Senate re-visiting questions from the previous meeting to see if the Senate needed to take further action. The questions and the Senate’s further actions/discussions are as follows:
Why do staff members have to go through their supervisor to get information on their accrued leave time? Why can’t this information be available directly to the employee like it used to be? The employee has a couple of options when needing to know the status of their leave time. The employees check stub contains a listing of leave time but this is at least a month behind. Most supervisors have the ability to check the employees leave time by means of the budget screen. Those supervisors or employees who do not have the leave option on their budget screens can send a request to Technology Services and request that it be added to their screen.
What is the status of the staff/faculty tuition waiver for those who do not receive the full tuition waiver? Is the administration planning on increasing the tuition waiver for those who receive a partial waiver? If so, when will this take effect? Cledis Stuart stated a trend in Arkansas colleges/universities such as the University of Arkansas and University of Arkansas at Little Rock to change the policy so the faculty and staff pay full price instead of half price. Kelli Honza recalled that Dr. Rankin was not opposed to small yearly increases in the amount of the tuition waiver. Kelli suggested writing a letter to Dr. Rankin to see if he is still in favor of the small yearly increases.
The handbook states that you may smoke in your “personal” space. If this is offensive to faculty, staff and students, which it is, what if anything can be done to get people to go outside to smoke. In one particular situation, a smoker has been asked repeatedly to smoke outside, but will not do so. Jason Goodrich stated a building would have to address the Presidents’ Council if they were interested in declaring their building a non-smoking building. Jason also stated that research had been conducted on this several years back and his opinion was that some buildings will never be smoke free.
The CLIP Program was discussed in detail and its discussions are as follows:
The Staff Senate agreed that a brief description of the CLIP Program needed to be included in the minutes. CLIP stands for Career Ladder Incentive Program and is designed to provide employees incentives in the form of promotions, which are treated as normal 6% and 8% promotions pay increases and/or bonus payments from 0-5.5%. The bonus payments would be based on competency-based criteria. The Uniform Conduct Standards handed out at the back-to-school staff meeting would be used in implementing this program.
Before the CLIP program can be implemented, monies have to be made available for the bonus section of the program and the staff evaluation has to be revised. A committee is being formed to assist Roger Giles in revising the evaluation form. Two members from the Continuing Education Staff Committee will be on the committee as well as two members from Staff Senate. Charles and Kelli Honza were selected to represent the Staff Senate and Kathy Cole was selected to represent the Continuing Education Staff Committee. The Cont. Ed. Staff Committee will meet on Thursday and elect another representative.
Facility Requests
In the past you could reserve a conference room in the Bruce Center and it was on the basis of first come, first serve. Now, the student activities office says that if someone had it reserved last semester, they get it without any questions or a new facility request completed. They say it is first come, but if a group had it last semester, they automatically get it. This is not fair to other organizations. The Facility Request Committee has re-convened and will meet in the coming weeks.
Committee Reports
Jason Goodrich reported on the status of the Hiring Guidelines Committee. Jason currently has two people appointed to the committee; he is still in need of two more for a total of five. He requested the committee spread the word to their constituents and notify him if someone is interested in serving on the committee.
New Business
None
Other
Charles Honza questioned the allocation of budget monies. If SAU receives a lump sum of money from the State, who determines where the money is allocated in the budget? Jason Goodrich stated that the president and vice presidents meet and take a proposed budget to the board for approval (after each department has submitted a budget proposal to their respective vice president). Cledis Stuart added that budget managers could submit increases in budget or capital monies but that it may take several years before the increase was approved. Kathy Cole ended the discussion with the comment that it was not essential for us to know how much is available but rather that we present a case for our individual office needs. Although, we may not know how much extra money is available we can still make a valid argument for our requested increase. Charles Honza provided a copy of the budget monies and their allocation for SAU for the next two years. Note: A copy of the budget is available in the Magale Library.
Cledis Stuart suggested a survey addressed to the staff to let the Staff Senate know what issues need to be addressed. The Staff Senate could compile and analyze the data and work on 2-3 issues within the year that were most important to the staff. Kathy Cole agreed that this would be a more productive way to proceed. Gaye Calhoun suggested we send the survey and include a response date so we can address the issues in a timely manner.
It was agreed that no more than three issues would be chosen per year in order to allow the Senate adequate time to address the issues. It would also be beneficial to have the staff provide input concerning other topics the staff would want to be discussed at the Staff Senate meetings in the future. Major issues to be included on the survey include: CLIP program, tuition waiver, and the smoking policy. Kathy Cole stated that a lot of the issues the Senate has addressed are included in the CLIP program, such as evaluations, raises and supervisor training. The survey format was discussed. Gaye Calhoun will work on a draft of the survey to present to the Staff Senate at the next meeting.
The possibility of developing a parking department, separate from the campus police, was discussed and Jason Goodrich suggested a survey to see if the staff would like to see this implemented.
Jason Goodrich made a motion to adjourn the meeting with a second by Vera Camp.
Keli Honza then adjourned the meeting.
The Staff Senate will meet on November 12, 2003 at 2pm in the Library.
