Tulane University
Staff Advisory Council
Minutes of Thursday, March 10, 2011
ATTENDEES
ATTENDEES
OFFICERS
UPTOWN CAMPUS
Gwen Chavez, Chair
Laurie Orgeron, Vice Chair
Rob Platner, Election Coordinator
Linda Cantero, Recording Secretary
Miriam Espinosa, Corresp.Secretary
Aaron Martin, Member At Large
Present
Present
Present
Excused
Present
DOWNTOWN CAMPUS
Tanya Ambrose
Susan Barrera, Immediate Past Chair
Linzi Conners
Carol Ardeneaux
Michael Heisser
Tami Jenniskens
Christopher Lane
Merisa Pasternak
Allan Slatkin
Kay Leger
Patsy Stewart
Shirley Tubre
Anita Kivell
Absent
Present
Present
Present
Present
Excused
Present
Absent
Excused
Present
Present
Excused
Present
Kathy Bourgeois
Sheri Bouyelas
Mike Griffith
Michael Harrison
Alysia Loshbaugh
Suzanne Lossi
Simon Dorfman
Lisa O’Dwyer
Patrick Randolph
Whitney Richards
Kimberly Vega
Judy Vitrano
Excused
Present
Excused
Present
Present
Absent
Absent
Present
Present
Present
Present
Excused
Ronald Cram (proxy)
Joseph Halm (proxy)
Ryan Henne (proxy)
Jane Johnston (proxy)
Kady Weingart (proxy)
Karissa Page (proxy)
Absent
Absent
Absent
Present
Absent
NORTHSHORE
Scott Goings
Corrie West
Desiree Waguespack
Present
Excused
Present*
INVITED GUESTS AND VISITORS
Cheryl Avera
Scott Cowen
Rebecca Conwell
* Via teleconference
All Officers are serving the Staff Advisory Council term 2010 – 2011
Present
Present
Present
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.
Report
Chavez
III.
of
the
Chair,
Gwen
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, chacha
-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.
We will be sending out a targeted survey soon to find out why some employees aren’t
participating in the programs and to get ideas on how to increase participation.
6.
Community Service
No Report
VII.
Old Business
None
VIII. New Business
None
IX. Guest Speaker – Scott Cowen
Scott Cowen gave a broad overview of how the University is doing. Because of the hard work
of the staff, faculty and students, the University is doing exceptionally well both academically
and financially. In many ways it is exceeding what we thought we would have accomplished
after Katrina 6 years ago.
Academically, we have not only recovered from Katrina, but in many ways we are stronger and
better today than before Katrina and stronger and better than we would have been if Katrina
hadn’t happened. This is a very bizarre thing to say, but the storm forced us to do some things
that we never would have done and turned out, especially with the Great Recession, that those
things were a good thing to do when we did them.
Undergraduate student interest, quality and retention, we are at an all time high as an institution.
This fall we ended up having 38,000 applications for 1,450 entering spots. That was the 3 rd
highest in America for private universities. Last year, we were number 1. We purposely added
more essays to the applications so we would get fewer applications and we still ended up
number 3 in the country. We also accepted 2500 fewer students this fall then last year. We are
hoping for 1450, based on what we know right now, it will be larger than that number. It seems
every year more and more students want to come to the University.
If you look at our Graduate and Professional programs, you will see the same thing across the
board. There is not a particular Graduate or Professional program that is not doing well. Some
are knocking the ball out of the park like the School of Medicine with 10,000 applications for 177
spots. In America, there are only 40,000 applications to Medical Schools anyway which means
1 out of 4 students applied to Medical School at Tulane University. It has been a terrific
rebound and people ask him all the time “Why?”. He thinks one of the major reasons is the fact
that Tulane made Public Service a part of the core curriculum. This change really resonated
with students throughout America since they are more civically engaged than ever before.
Faculty retention and hiring – always concerned if we could retain and hire faculty after Katrina.
Much like the students, we found that faculty retention and recruitment is better than it has ever
been at the University. We had a hard time trying to figure out that reason and we came across
a couple reasons why. Whether we know it or not, we are greatly admired as a University
across the United States for the way we recovered and rebuilt ourselves after Katrina. It is very
well known that during the time we were closed, the University supported all of its faculty and
staff. That message got out in higher education and people thought it wasn’t a bad place to be
because the institution stood by their side.
For the staff side, we made a commitment about a year ago to hire 70 people in Development.
We have hired about half. We are at an all time high for Research. He didn’t see any weak
spots in the University academically.
Financially, he sees the same thing. During the Great Recession, no one lost their job and one
year employees received raises. There were layoffs at other institutions and we were able to
get through that without any layoffs.
The Board was told that we would not break even until 2012. Starting next year, we will be at
break even on an operating basis, if not, we would be pretty close.
Endowment is within $100,000 from all time high. We have had some great success with
fundraising.
Financially, we have met if not exceeded the goals we have met.
# 1 thing President Cowen spends most of his time thinking about is the future of the clinical
platform at the School of Medicine. We have a very uncertain healthcare environment with
Healthcare Reform and rebuilding our healthcare system in New Orleans. Charity doesn’t exist,
we are building a new VA hospital and another new teaching hospital, so where does Tulane fit
in all of this and will it meet our needs for the future. The School of Medicine accounts for 30%
of the total University budget. The clinical aspect is about 1/3 of that. So we have to make sure
that we get this right.
Higher education has a lot of challenges ahead. Challenges like the affordability, accessibility,
what is going to happen to technology and how will it impact what we do at the University. The
fact that the Federal Government is going to end up cutting money that will go to higher
education. The number of women going to college is getting higher. This impacts what
programs we should have, residents hall, support services that women need more than men.
Extraordinarily proud of the staff and faculty. You are all battle tested from Katrina and
demonstrated your loyalty and dedication to not just Tulane, but New Orleans and I have great
admiration and respect for all of you who have stayed the course and stayed with us.
We just did a Staff salary survey and the good news is people are generally satisfied working for
the University but there are things we can improve on. We are always looking on how we can
do more in the area of compensation. We made some progress. He is most worried about
healthcare. Costs are projected to go up about 8%. In the next 5 years, it will be double digit.
Need to rethink about how to provide insurance for the population. There will not be any radical
change, it will be incremental, but there needs to be change or else all will suffer.
Questions and Comments:
A father from San Francisco told one the SAC representatives that his daughter was trying o
decide between USC and Tulane. He had heard that Tulane was the USC of Louisiana as far
as private institutions. It gave the SAC representative a chance to talk up Tulane and tell them
to visit.
President Cowen said that of the students accepted that visit campus, 60% enroll. If they never
visit, it goes down to 10%.
There is a concern about the size of the classes that students won’t be able to get the classes
that they want. President Cowen is a little frustrated because 2500 fewer students were
accepted in order to get down to 1450, but then the yield went up. He is worried that we are
stretching the infrastructure – advising, residents hall, etc. Talked with the Provost to anticipate
1600 students and that he needed to add sections for next fall. They need to start thinking
about this now instead of June.
One representative who started after Katrina wanted to compliment President Cowen stating
that his leadership has made a difference.
Retention has gone up at the University. For the 1st time in the history of the University, the last
2 years have had retention of over 90%. If classes get to large and people are unhappy,
retention can go down again.
They are going to start looking for faculty for the added sections, and once they have faculty,
will look for a place to put them as far as classroom. There is some flexibility with Richardson
coming on line, and they may be some flexibility elsewhere. Hillel building has classroom space
and it is not exclusive for Jewish Studies. An arrangement was made that classrooms need to
be made available for University scheduling.
Question was brought up about the Pike House. President Cowen said that one of the TV
stations wanted to come out and fill the demolition of the Pike House. The reason the Pike
House is being demolished is because it would be less expensive to demolish it rather than
renovate it. President Cowen said that they want to put a Police Substation along with some
other space in it.
Is it true that the new Dorm will be across from the Boot and will it be a Freshman Dorm? A
final decision has not been made. Will think about what the best utilization will be since the
Boot is across the street. This is why we want the substation across the street.
How high can you build the new dorm? Because of zoning, you can only build 4 or 5 floors.
One representative told President Cowen that he was missed at the Staff Family Fun Day. He
apologized and said that he was out of town that day. He is very delighted that faculty, staff and
students want him to attend their events. Most university presidents never get invited to any
event. He tries to make as many as he can, and told SAC not to take his absence as an excuse
as never to invite him, keep inviting him because he likes it when he is included.
President Cowen asked if we should talk about the football stadium. He has been looking at the
facilities for the football team that long term we should not be staying in the Superdome. The
question is what do you do? Build something on or off campus? We have been looking at all
options with a preference for on campus. If we do, it will be where the practice field is not. It will
not happen unless we get donors to pay for it. If you build a stadium, it can actually make
money for the University. If we can do it on campus, it would be terrific for students as well as
everyone. It would cost about 50 million dollars to build a new stadium. We can also put
classrooms in it.
President Cowen said that the only thing Tulane would be willing to do is if they raised 30 or 40
million, we could bond out 10 or 20 million.
We thanked President Cowen for coming to talk to us as well as thanking him for the money that
he gives SAC so we can do thing for the staff. He said that we seem to put it to good use.
X.
Adjournment
Next Meeting:
May 19, 2011, 3:30 Dean’s Conference Room in the School of Public Health
The meeting was adjourned at 5:00.
Respectfully submitted,
Gwen Chavez
SAC Chair