SERVICE PROFESSIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING
MINUTES
September 17, 2015
8:30 am – 10:30 am, International Pavilion
Host: Dylan Rust
Attendees:
Dylan Rust, Chair, SPAC
MaryLynn Quartaroli, Coordinator, Office for Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity
Suzanne Siler, HRM
Andrea Graves, Student Learning Centers
Mark Young, ITS
Mary Kate Wolter, NAU Foundation
Brian, CHHS
Shawn, Marketing Coordinator, University Marketing
Pat Johnson, Coordinator, School of Communications
Kathleen Carpenter, Coordinator, Personalized Learning, Extended Campuses
Justin Hagin, Comptroller’s Office
Tia Truss, Coordinator, International House
Trevor Luttinen, ITS
Dee Dee Theiss, CSAC
Jennus Burton, VP Finance &Administration, Guest
Diane Verkest from HR is not available due to staff retreat.
By Collaborate:
Flower Darby
Elizabeth Wilkinson
Sharon Tewksbury
Matthew Tombaugh
Gail Westerlund
Christina Brown
Debbie Yeh
Thomas Uno
Wendy Brunn
Teresa Haven
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8:30 am -
Call to Order & Introductions
Dylan Rust, Chair
Call to order by Dylan Rust with introductions for in-person attendees.
8:35 am-9:00 am
University Efficiencies, Campus Construction Status, and HR Update
Jennus Burton,
VP Finance & Admin.
University budget challenge, with $13 million cut, which grew to $17.2 million by the Governor and the
Legislator. We completed the budget cycle. Submitted the budget to ABOR with the deficit. Benefits
were cut to save money. Discussions on Efficiency plans are taking place; some involve IT.
IT will meet tomorrow. Discussions to hire an efficiency expert, Huron. However, due to cost, we
decided to go it alone. IT is working on their efficiency themselves.
Shared Services concept. I will learn more about that from my colleagues who have done this for 8-9
years. I will work with the President throughout this year and share that with the campus.
Seriously looking at space. Joanne Keene, Chief of Staff, is working with the Vice presidents to evaluate
use of space. Determining the needs for space and how to accommodate them, especially Engineering
has 3400 square feet, with another 6,000 sq.ft. in south campus.
ABOR meeting coming up. Will discuss the Capital improvement plan. Efficiency compliance, $57-$58
million cost. Requesting from ABOR a supplemental appropriation to help out with the $4 million
deficit. Performance funding model will be presented to ABOR and at the Legislature meeting in
January. Formula proposed is to fund the University in accordance with the number of resident students
in attendance. Legislature will approve budgets in March, 2016. We would also like to see a form of
capital funding.
Q&A: #1
Q. (question not audible in Collaborate)
JB:
All Vice-presidents have been asked to go back and review their areas to see how we can become more
efficient using existing resources.
Legislature should have given NAU $62 million, which we did not get.
We should at least get $200 per Resident FTE, which will account for $3.9 million, per year starting next
year. Not sure if it’s going to be approved by the Legislature.
NAU’s cut was about 23%. We took a higher percentage of the cut, but in real dollars, it was not.
The overall cut was $99 million, with ASU and UofA picking up their portions.
We are about $17.2 million. ASU and UofA are going through a similar situation that we are going
through. ASU is doing well with their online program and using those resources to supplement what
they need for the on campus programs.
We are about $768 FTE above this time last fall. Sept. 21st is our 21 day count. Once we get the
numbers, we will know exactly how we did. Need to know how many were scholarship students, vs full
pay students. Once those numbers are prepared, the President will present it to the Board.
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Uof A is trying to get into the online business but they are struggling with that.
We are all three joining hands on the budget proposal:
UofA needs an additional $8 million for their Agricultural program. They will have a decision package
that will go forward. The rest of us are going forward with our proposal.
We are proposing three major components of the budget:
Performance funding
Restore the funds you took from us
Some form of capitol allocation
Q&A: #2
Q. Is there a sense of an actual deadline to address the budget concerns?
JB: no.
We refinanced our debt, and took that money upfront.
We got about $1.9 mil this year. It helped, but it is a temporary help.
Goal is to get everything accomplished by the end of this fiscal year.
Construction:
a. Science & Health Building
Had a busy summer. Facilities services has been very busy.
We will celebrate the opening of the Science & Health building this Thursday night around 5:30 pm -7:30
pm. We invited ABOR to attend. The building is 18000 sq. ft. We had an estimated completion of May
29th, but actual completion was July 1st. This gave us enough time for move in. Still commissioning
systems. Students are there. The classrooms—they love the classrooms. The auditorium, we’re very
proud of it. It’s going to be a very functional building!
We finished sidewalk from Knoles Drive from San Francisco to Lone Tree. It was dangerous during the
snow. 3,000-4,000 students live on the east of campus. It is now much safer for students. It was
finished on Aug. 31st.
b. The Aquatics and Tennis Complex: (The Official Name) - ATC
Will have a swimming pool, diving well, and six indoor tennis courts.
Will be done by January, 2016. We expect to occupy it and put it to use by then.
Planning to have the pool filled with water in November.
In January we will tear down the old Aquatics building and add six outdoor tennis courts and recreate
the recreation field by June-July, 2016.
Student and Academic Services Building
Located on the west side of the San Francisco parking garage. Will be a four story building,
which will house Undergrad Admissions and The One Stop Shop to include Financial Aid, Student
Account, and Res Life. The parking structure and bookstore is just next door. This will increase customer
service for our students substantially.
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The second floor is dedicated to the Lumberjack Math center. They are now in temporary
classes in HLC. Third and fourth floor will occupy faculty offices. 75 faculty offices. We’ve grown about
25% in student growth, but we haven’t increased spaces for faculty. Some are working from home, and
this is not conducive to student advising.
Meeting with the New Provost to determine space allocations.
We are also finally in the International Pavilion, which was completed this summer. Had the
building dedication. Working through the kinks. This is a great addition to the campus.
We have a lot of small projects going on, asphalt, concrete, building repairs, etc.
c). Human Resources:
We worked diligently with the Benefits Committee. The President asked us to re-evaluate our benefits
package and try to achieve about $1million savings to the institution. We have to deal with the
Affordable Care Act. The Cadillac tax is a component of the ACA. The University does about $32 mil per
year, but we would be taxed if we exceeded the individual benefits per the Cadillac tax limits, we would
be taxed 40%. We have to scale down our benefits package.
We increased the out-of-pocket maximums. We were originally at $4,000 and $8,000. We went to
$6850 and $13,700, which will save the university approximately $100,000.
Deductible increased $100 for Single, $200 per family.
We put aside mandatory drugs (generic vs name brand) because it affected a lot of people.
We still have a mail order pharmacy program that is still in place. We can get your retail program up to
90 days, which saved us about $40,000.
We had some interesting data that came back to the Benefits committee. We found out that there were
some people who were going to the Emergency room for visits about 12-14 times per year. We found it
a little exasperating, so, after meeting the consultant, and determined that after the second annual visit
to the emergency room, the copay goes from $125 to $250 to push individuals to work directly with
their doctor to determine what the problem is. In plan design changes, the university will save about
$250,000, which doesn’t bring us to our goal of $1 million savings.
A hand-out was provided. Jennus explained the rate changes:
Employee only is going up $6.62 per month.
Employee plus One Child tier is going down $21.66 per month.
Employee plus adult going up $19.40 per month.
Family is going up $33.30 per month.
If you participate in the Healthy-U program, you should invest in it and realize the savings of about $20
per month. This combined with the Benefits changes brought us to $780,000 savings to the institution,
which chips away at the $4 million deficit. If we were to make any more changes, it would make us less
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competitive with the State program. BCBS is better than the state. Open enrollment starts at the end of
October and goes to November, so if you want to make any changes…that would be the time to do so.
Questions and discussions continued but were not audible in Collaborate.
Next year we will have to take another look at Benefits and taxing health care benefits.
Diane is visiting with the Commission on the Status of Women regarding the provision of parental care.
About a year ASU and UofA were looking into giving parents an additional six weeks of leave for child
care. We determined it would cost NAU about $200,000. We are looking at how to keep benefits lower
so we can transfer some of that into salaries, which is important to focus on in the future, rather than
increase benefits. We do have an excellent benefit package. We did not implement the six weeks
parental leave last policy year, and that is what we will present on the Commission on the Status of
Women next week.
9:00 AM – 9:40 AM
SPAC BUSINESS
a. Approval of Minutes
August minutes were approved online and are on the SPAC website.
b. Internal Committee Updates (not clearly audible in Collaborate)
Supervisory Training (Cassie, Shari, Angela)
Publicity (Justin, Marylynn, and Andrea)
SPAC Ambassadors (Cathleen and Cheryl)
Redesigned the SPAC welcome card and will be delivering welcomes to the first group next
week.
SPAC Service Projects (Kim, Cassie, and Alicia)
Voted on the Trail. Will see about getting a section of the trail, perhaps adjacent to the campus.
Annual Meeting (Mark, Mary-Kate, Suzanne)
Leadership Awards (Pat, Trevor)
University Committee Updates
President’s Cabinet (Dylan Rust)
The University is going through a reaccreditation process. Meetings with different stakeholders will be
held across campus. If you want to sit in and have your voice heard, then please come (to the next SPAC
meeting) and talk about what you would like to see the direction the University to go in.
Strategic Planning & Budget Council (Angela Miller) – no report
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Academic Standards Committee (Andrea Graves)
Employee Development Day Conference (Cheryl Goldberg)
Classified Staff Advisory Council: Mary-Kate Wolter
Commission on Ethnic Diversity: Kathleen Carpenter
Diversity workshop coming up with Hine Wieter, Maori from New Zealand
Various diversity events were announced
Diversity certification is going on with participation from students and faculty
Survey on what NAU should look like in 10 years is going out
October Events– October 2-4, Family Weekend and Oct. 23rd. Home Coming, with parade
downtown.
Commission on the Status of Women: MaryLynn Quartaroli
Report not clearly audible in Collaborate
Events for today were announced
Faculty Senate: Shari Miller (not in attendance)
Benefits: Kim Knowles (no report)
Commission on Disability Access and Design: Trevor Luttinen
Report not clearly audible in Collaborate
Council on Inclusion Update: There is no money.
Parking and Transportation: Mark Young
Have not met yet
Portal Steering Committee: Justin Hagin
Report not clearly audible in Collaborate
LGBTQIA Commission: Cassie Petit
No report
Additional comments not audible in Collaborate.
Adjournment: Motioned and seconded
Meeting Adjourned
9:40 -10:00 am
International Pavilion Tour
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Dylan Rust,
Director, Global Student Life
Next meeting: October 15, 2015 at 8:30 am, Extended Campuses, Bldg. #16) True Blue Room
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