Tulane University
Staff Advisory Council
Minutes of Thursday, October 9, 2008
ATTENDEES
ATTENDEES
DOWNTOWN CAMPUS
OFFICERS
Kathleen Brumfield
Glenda Folse
Karen Hiller
Tami Jenniskens
Absent
Excused
Present
Present
Roxanne Johnson
Paula Lucas
Linda Miller
Cindy Stewart
Shirley Tubre
Merisa Pasternak (proxy)
Yesenia Vasquez (proxy)
Excused
Present
Present
Absent
Present
Excused
Excused
Susan Barrera, Chair
Rhonda Earles, Vice Chair
Gwen Chavez, Election Coordinator
Lisa Britton, Recording Secretary,
Present
Present
Excused
Present
Member at Large
UPTOWN CAMPUS
Marty Brantley
Liz Davey
Shirley Dymond
Excused
Absent
Present
Miriam Espinosa
Cynthia Hayes, Immediate
Present
Present
Cheryl Sterling, Corresp. Secretary
Jered Bocage, Parliamentarian
Present
Present
MEMBERS – AT – LARGE
Rob Platner
Present
INVITED GUESTS
Jason Chretien, WFMO
Present
Barbara Knill (Tulane Women’s
Assoc.)
Present
Past Chair
Aaron Martin
Lisa O’Dwyer
Judy Vitrano
Linda Wright
Argentina Acosta (proxy)
Jenny Daigle Benoit (proxy)
Laurie Orgeron (proxy)
Present
Excused
Present
Proxy
Absent
Absent
Excused
VISITORS
Mike Griffith (proxy for Linda Wright)
Present
NORTHSHORE
Eileen deHaro
Mary Little
Robert Johnson (proxy)
Excused
Present*
Excused
*Via teleconference
All Officers are serving the Staff Advisory Council term 2008 – 2009
TU Staff Advisory Council
October 9, 2008
Page 2
Call to Order: Susan Barrera, SAC Chair, called the October 9, 2008 meeting of the
Staff Advisory Council to order at 3:34 p.m. The meeting was held in the School of
Public Health Dean’s Conference Room in the Tidewater Building downtown.
I. Review and Approval of the Minutes
After discussion regarding typographical corrections to the September minutes, Chair
Barrera called for a motion to approve the September 11, 2008 minutes. The minutes
were approved with the corrections.
II. Guest Speaker, Barbara Knill
Barbara Knill gave a presentation on the Tulane Women’s Association (see Attachment
I). It is a service organization for women - faculty, staff, wives of faculty, wives of staff,
or significant other. They are in their 99th year as a service organization with
membership at approximately 150 down from over 500. TUWA is an organization that
promotes an atmosphere of community within the Tulane environment.
As a non-profit, TUWA uses their resources on things the community wants or needs.
Their emphasis is on “newcomers”. Newcomers can be anyone from a person just
moving to the New Orleans area needing assistance on how to obtain a driver’s license,
or how to register to vote. Or a newcomer can be someone who had just heard about
them and would like to join. By focusing on newcomers sometimes they tend to forget
about the women that are already here part of Tulane and the many campuses.
TUWA has many activity groups and are willing to try different things that would interest
the diversified organization. Some of the groups: arts and crafts, daytime and evening
book groups, a bridge group, mothers and daughters group – which TUWA is reaching
out to the Lusher group, a knitting group that made shawls for cancer patients, some
groups meet on a Saturday or Sunday. They also have a one hour brown bag lunch
and lecture held once a month.
Future of upcoming events: a “Fall Coffee” on October 16th honoring three women -Mary Brown, VP of Health Sciences Systems, Carol Habber, Dean of School of Liberal
Arts, and Nora Lubbel, wife of Charles Lovell, director of Newcomb Art Gallery,
November will be an art gallery showing; December will be a holiday party with all
members invited; January will have a women’s basketball game; February a faculty
lecture; March will be a tour; and April is their spring luncheon.
They invite women to attend the various functions and activity groups that provide an
opportunity to meet and become acquainted with women from the Tulane community.
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October 9, 2008
Page 3
Their office is located at the Elmwood campus and you can visit their website at
http://www.tulane.edu/~tuwa/ for more information on the TUWA.
III. Report of the Chair, Susan Barrera

Susan Barrera announced that President Scott Cowen would be our guest speaker
at our May 12th meeting. This meeting will be held on a Tuesday to accommodate
President Cowen’s schedule. Yvette Jones has agreed to be our speaker at our
March 12th meeting. Still trying to set a date for Tony Lorino to be a speaker at one
of our meetings. The Provost will be our speaker at our November meeting next
month and in February will be Dr. Ben Sachs.

Aaron Martin was asked to talk to us about the textbook fund. Aaron submitted an
“ad hoc SAC Textbook Scholarship Committee” outline (see Attachment 2). The
information was the result of a working committee putting together some guidelines
and goals for the textbook scholarship awards.

Anne Banos will talk to Yvette Jones and Anne was supportive of the idea but
wanted to bring to our attention that approximately 450 employees use the tuition
waiver. Of that, approximately 350 are staff and if coverage is for staff only, we will
be reaching a small percentage of staff. So the concern is we are only reaching a
small percentage of our staff that will be eligible to apply for this award. Also we will
have to work with financial aid and general counsel. Some staff members take out
loans and this will also need to be taken into consideration so we would need to
work financial aid on this.
Anne suggested if we were interested in assisting in another way, we could have a
“professional development fund” for people to attend out of town trips for
seminars/conferences. Possibly our fund could put up part of the money needed for
a person to attend, with their department matching the dollar amount. This is a
complaint that many are not able to attend because of the financial amount required
to attend out of town.
Either direction we take for granting awards, we will have a lot of hurdles to
overcome to get it started. Overall, we would like to reward the staff in some way.
Some universities have it set up that you could use the money for textbooks, or to
cover cost of certification. There is enough support to want the work group to keep
investigating and putting something together to present to SAC as a draft.

A suggestion was made that SAC do an outreach for the University Medical Center
in Galveston, Texas. As an example, after Hurricane Katrina, Carnegie-Mellon SAC
members had a money donation drive for Tulane employees. Carnegie-Mellon
purchased gift cards (for Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-Mart) for distribution to eligible
Tulane employees. Doing something like this would be a nice gesture from us at
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October 9, 2008
Page 4
SAC toward those affected by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. We will look at this and
possibly do something in the spring of 2009.
IV. WFMO Liaison, Jason Chretien
Two key issues from the July SAC meeting given to Aileen that was asked for further
clarification: (1) What does WFMO look like now? Originally there were three different
departments – Payroll, Human Resources, and Human Resources Information Systems
-- reporting to different senior executives. Since Hurricane Katrina, changes have been
made to bring the three organizations under one roof and it is now called WFMO. With
the reorganization of the departments, new positions were created – (1) Jason is Asst
VP on operational side of WFMO; (2) Strategy Planning and Implementation – how to
meet needs and direction of organization and how to effectively meet needs of
employees; and (3) Customer Service -- realized that organization of the size of ours
needed an element that was lacking in helping employees get the information they
need. These three are the core of the organization.
Think of graphically, three circles intersecting together. Haven’t changed business of
the three original key departments, still have key directors in all of those areas, and
people report to those directors.
The WFMO website has a lot of good information -- http://www.tulane.edu/~wfmo/ -There is a link at the bottom of this page that gives direct phone numbers and a
synopsis of the person’s job duties.
Other take away from July meeting, (2) Status of the “compensation study” – a company
outside of Tulane was hired to review 868 staff positions. The consulting group has
reviewed positions and developed a new grading structure and proposed policy
structure to go along with the salary grading developed for the positions that need to be
graded higher. This is a small percentage – most were found to be in line. The
information needs to go through normal approval process – policy review, admin
council, president’s cabinet, etc. Review and presentation to the Administrative Council
will be sometime in December. In January the Council will disseminate the information
and implementation will go out to constituents and departments and explain the new
salary structure and implementation. Doing a “road show” to explain to the constituents.
As to direct results of who is impacted / who is not impacted? That is still in formulation
process; there is a larger plan in place and we will hear more once the plan is finalized.
Salary ranges are being compared on a national scale, along with years of services,
and years in the position. Tools to arrive at these numbers are different than what has
been done in the past.
“Compensation Study” doesn’t necessarily mean a “raise”. Some may get a raise, but
not necessarily everyone, but we are evaluating all positions and salaries. Criteria was
set on the position, some positions are specific to this area so evaluating not only
TU Staff Advisory Council
October 9, 2008
Page 5
national market data but position specific data. In grading any position, you cannot look
at just one piece of information, yet at several elements, including what is financially
sustainable within the university. In looking at the national market, there are positions
that are specific for this region, i.e. positions at the Primate Center. All this is factored
into the grading system. Also considered is years of service, years in position, all are
factors that come into grading a particular position. The tool to do this is completely
new and we are in a learning curve right now on how to use and implement this new
grading system. We now have 26 grades. The result will give us a decrease in the
number of grades and each will have wider ranges.
Question asked of Jason: the lack of policy that clearly articulates that departments are
allowed to offer flex time for their employees. Because there is not a clear statement,
departments are not willing to allow flextime. This was related to price of gas issue and
this question was given to Aileen at the July meeting. Staff Advisory was asking if
WFMO could have something written in the policy to clarify. Jason will take this away
from the meeting and will have a response for us at the next meeting.
V. Officer Reports
A. University Senate

Rhonda Earles gave the following report.
Following a few housekeeping items, President Cowen gave his update on the
university. Freshman enrollment in 2008 was 1565 with an acceptance rate of
27%. We have received 20,000 applications for 2009. The qualification cut-off
has been raised to prevent all accepted students being identified in the early
decision pool.

The faculty hiring/retention enhancement program is in its second phase,
concentrating on the schools of medicine and public health. The third phase
begins next year. A staff compensation enhancement program is in progress.

A total of 142 have been hired. There has been an increase of 116% in chairs
and professorship. Jeremy Crigler is the new chief investment officer, with
offices in Connecticut.

The Promise and Distinction campaign exceeded its goal of $700 million, pulling
in $730 million. The fund-raising staff is now evaluating next steps.

An expansion project is underway at the primate center.

The university finished FY08 with a $20 million operating deficit, down from both
the projected deficit of $34 million and the adjusted deficit of $28 million. The
FY09 operating deficit is $30 million. The university continues to negotiate with
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October 9, 2008
Page 6
the remaining insurance company over Katrina losses/damages of $100 million.
Resolution with FEMA is estimated to take another three to five years.

The current economy has presented some challenges to the university, but its
exposure is minimal because the value of our endowment is based on a rolling
36-month value. If the problems are prolonged, we will face more issues and
anticipate student loans to be affected.

Among the FY09 goals are finalizing the doctoral program enhancement, which
will provide $4 million/year to support doctoral programs. This represents an
80% increase. Project 2020 will continue to work towards its goal of doubling
external funding to Tulane, resulting in $300 million.

The situation that occurred in the spring at the Pi Kappa Alpha initiation has
prompted a major review of the code of student conduct and campus life policies.

Searches currently underway include: chief technology officer, executive director
of Newcomb Institute, executive director of Murphy Institute, and dean of the law
school.

United Healthcare has been renewed as the carrier for 2009. An increase of 6.5
percent will be put in place. Faculty and staff should receive the open enrollment
materials soon. In addition, UHC is assisting with a wellness program and staff
can earn $175 gift certificate for completing a health risk assessment survey, a
telephone counseling session and an online session. Walking programs and peer
seminars are being developed.
B. Board of Administrators
No meeting.
VI. University Senate Committee Reports
1. Benefits
No meeting.
2. Budget Review
No meeting.
3. Information Technology
No report.
TU Staff Advisory Council
October 9, 2008
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4. Equal Opportunity
No report.
5. Physical Facilities
No report.
6. Social Issues
No report.
VII. SAC Sub-Committees
1. Election Committee
No report.
2. Electronic Technology and Information
No report.
3. Staff Appreciation
Rob Platner gave the following report.
 Prior to this meeting, we met to discuss ideas for having another Staff
Recognition event. It was agreed that we should rotate an event on the three
campuses giving everyone a chance to see the event, and doing something
similar to what was done last year with the Ricky Graham event.
4. Staff Issues
Linda Miller will be the chair of this committee, and no meeting held yet.
5. Constitution
No Report.
VIII. Old Business
Gift given to Cynthia Hayes for serving as Chair.
TU Staff Advisory Council
October 9, 2008
Page 8
Susan Barrera will sending out an email to all staff (see Attachment 3) after each SAC
meeting and including a link to our website and our minutes.
Community outreach – Cynthia asked if we are interested in adopting the Christmas
families again. Cynthia will do the preliminary work and get information on two families
and their needs. She will present the information to us at the next SAC meeting in
November.
IX. New Business
Next Meeting: The next meeting will be held on November 13, 2008 at the LavinBernick Center for University Life in the Race Conference Room at 3:30 pm.
X. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 4:55 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Lisa M. Britton
Recording Secretary
Attachment I
Attachment 2