Engineering Staff Advisory Council
December 03, 2009 Minutes – Final
(November/December ESAC meeting)
IIHR Conference Room
Members present: Dawn Marshall, Ryan Baumert, Troy Lyons, Daniel Johnsen, Diana Harris, Deborah
Hampton, Susan Beckett, Dina Blanc
Members missing: Pete Haug, Andy Craig, Angie Schenkel
Liasions present: Janann Schiele
I.
Call to Order – 8:31 AM
II. October minutes approved, no amendments
III. Impromptu new business items – none
IV. Liaison Committee Reports
a. University Staff Council – Dina
i. See meeting notes attached below
b. Human Resources, Janann Schiele
i. This is Janann’s last meeting, December 23 is her last day. She will be
collaborating with Jan Waterhouse to read submitted JIFs. The deadline for
these has been extended to January 4th. Thanks for everything!
ii. Iowa is in better shape than ISU and UNI regarding the budget situation
according to the budget officer meeting. Next year will pose a large challenge
as 13 million dollars in funding will be given back.
iii. Reductions on July 1, 2011 are quite likely – it has already been reported that
there will be no salary raises for next year.
iv. The AFSME state vote will require that Merit staff take 5 furlough days between
now and June.
(Due to a miscommunication, several visitors mistakenly attended this meeting. They’ll
come for the next one. Dina requests that someone take over the official ESAC email
communication. Diana volunteers.)
V. Old Business
a. Committee Reports
i. Executive committee – Diana will send out her notes regarding the budget
portion of the November Brown Bag with Dean Butler (attached below).
ii. Exec com meeting with Dean Butler – Discussion of the previous month’s
meeting. An idea was raised that ESAC could obtain a seat on the EAC. A followup email should be drafted and set to Dean Butler to continue this discussion.
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ESAC requested that staff awards be acknowledged as soon as the recipient has
been notified of an award. Because the official announcement of awards by the
Dean’s Office often lags behind the notification, the announcement is no longer
news.
iii. International/Diversity Committee – Coke Funds grant was awarded for $500.
Tonya Peeples, Dean Butler and LD Chen wrote letters of support for the
Catalyst grant. Susan will organize some sort of communication to solicit a
discussion about where to hang the flags.
iv. Elections Committee – no news.
v.
Staff Excellence Award – no news.
vi. Staff Service Leave – Currently have a draft of the proposal and need to find a UI
council member to get an “in”. The final version will be accessible via
Sharepoint.
vii. Social Events – There is a conflict with the NADS potluck and Dean Butler’s
holiday party. Potential for a chili cookoff in January, Ryan is currently doing
some research.
viii. Webmaster/Publicity - Wellness is scheduled to come in for a presentation in
January to discuss health coaching, LiveHealthy Iowa. Diana will send out an
email to notify the staff instead of Dina.
ix. ESAC Welcome – We’ll need to get information from Jan as people come and go.
It is mutually agreed that while a careful tone is important, a generic “thanks for
your contribution” should be acceptable to communicate to everyone,
regardless of the details of their departure.
b. Staff Milestones – no new information
c. Staff Service Award – Diana sent out a rewritten proposal that included some changes
suggested by EAC. They liked the original proposal very much. Barring any ESAC
concerns, it will be sent to Dean Butler.
d. Brown Bag with Dean Butler (Nov 9 report) – Diana’s notes are below. The discussion
centered around who was responsible for the Brown Bags. Ryan implied that he
thought he was, but said that he wanted to hear an official acknowledgement of it.
Diana and Dawn explained that originally they asked Ryan for some dates for Brown
Bags and some dates for Executive Committee meetings with Barry – at some point
along the way these two things seemed to have been inadvertently combined into ESAC
hosted Brown Bags and that has caused some confusion.
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Dawn and Diana explained that the December 7th meeting should be cancelled due to
inadequate notice time for the College. Dawn, Diana and Susan will put together some
text for an email announcement if it is rescheduled for another date in December. The
email announcement for the Brown Bag will now be sent out from the ESAC email
address.
Ryan will look into another meeting time (for December) and check with Barry about
whether there is sufficient new information that Barry would like to communicate that
would justify a December Brown Bag.
The idea that Jan W could be introduced at a Brown Bag and be made available to
questions was very popular and the consensus was that it could be a very big draw.
There was debate about whether Jan would have availability and Barry would be in
favor of this. It was decided that somebody (no one was specifically named) should
contact Barry/Jan and ask whether there is interest and what timeframe would work for
them.
VI. New Business
a. We are joined by Marian Muste to discuss the Research Faculty track job classification.
He has great concern as the University’s current job track approval for Research Faculty
is lagging behind the national standard. He believes the current description strips rights
that they should have and feels that the situation is currently not attractive for him and
his colleagues. The plan is scheduled to go for presidential review in 2011.
Until then, he’d like to try and identify anyone else in any other colleges whose job
might fall under the same description. All those with a common view can join together
and formulate their vision to present it to President Mason. The initial effort will simply
to make any and all people who might potentially affected by this situation to be aware
of it.
ESAC will assist or facilitate the process in any way that is helpful. Dina will attempt to
compile a list of all Research Engineers. Are there other positions that would qualify for
this but might have a different description? Dina will also send out job descriptions that
might help ID potentials. IIHR scientists and engineers may be interested in this.
b. Topic to discuss with Jan Waterhouse was tabled due to lack of time.
VII. Meeting adjourned at 10:34. Next meeting is January 28th at NADS from 8:30 to 10:30AM.
---------------------------------------------UI Staff Council Meeting, November 11, 2009
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Dina’s notes
I.
Budget reversion. The President of Staff Council compared the budget reversion plans
presented by the UI, UNI and ISU, emphasizing that the U of I was the only one of the three
to have held 13M of ARRA funds to help cover the eventuality of a reversion, and that UI
grad and undergraduate students were the only students among the three Regents’
Universities to support both the extraordinary tuition increase of $100 for spring and a
proposed 6% increase for next year.
AFSCME has proposed a 5-day furlough for all Merit employees working in the state. The
proposal will must be ratified by the membership in December.
The University of Iowa lost 25% of its State contributions over the course of this year.
II. Sue Buckley reported on retirement programs and the notion of vesting.
A. All of the alternative phased-retirement plans and early retirement plans have
processed (approved or disapproved) for the UI except at UIHC. Those already
approved are expected to generate a savings $5.1 M in general education funds. People
about to enter phased or early retirement will have the same reduction from 10% to
8% contribution to TIAA-CREF that active employees will have as of November 1st.
B. Vesting. The University is considering the possibility of vesting the first three years of
employer contributions to TIAA-CREF. This means that if new employees leave before 3
years, the employers’ contribution reverts to the employer. This is a very common
practice in the private sector and could save about $1 M/year for the University. Staff
Council members asked if such a policy could affect efforts to recruit a more diverse
faculty and staff (as many minority candidates might want to see what it was like to live
in Iowa before committing themselves for three years or more).
III. Diane Leventry, from Central HR, reported on its effort to develop a “new staff assimilation”
program and on the furlough notice job internship program.
A. The U of I is developing a year-long “new staff assimilation” program which is designed
to give new staff more information about the U of I and the Iowa City community, and
to create more of a sense of belonging to the University. Diane previewed the first step
which was a video, a link to which will be sent to all new employees at the time of their
first appointment, which gives a lot of information on a wide variety of issues (parking,
dress code) and links to resources that are likely to be of interest to new staff. This
practice is also referred to (rather awkwardly, in my opinion) as “onboarding” in the
private sector.
B. The U of I has developed an internship program for furloughed P&S staff. Working with
Central HR, a furloughed staff member may work as an intern in a new unit to either
demonstrate skills they have that might be valuable to the new unit or gain new skills
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from that unit. Diane described this as a win/win situation, which allows the
furloughing department to wind down the work of the furloughed employee, allows the
department in which the employee is interning to preview a potential new employee,
and allow the furloughed employee to either demonstrate their skills or learn new ones.
Two people have gone through the internship process: one has gotten a job elsewhere,
presumably based on the skills learned during the internship and one is ongoing.
IV. Cynthia Joyce and Lois Cox of the Ombudsperson’s Office gave their annual report to the staff
Council. They reported that FY09 was a very stressful year for the University, and noted the
following trends:
A. A greater tendency of supervisors to avoid getting involved in longstanding conflict (i.e.
– “I’ve been trying to work this out for 12 years and nothing works.”)
B. A n increased number of complaints involving a failure of empathy with a minority or
person of lower perceived status within the University.
C. A misunderstanding about FMLA, in which employee and/or supervisor might use it as
club, rather than a tool (i.e. “You better get on FMLA, or else!” or “I’ll just go on FMLA.
So there!”)
----------------------------------------------Diana’s emailed notes from the November Brown Bag:
from 11/9 brown bag-there is no assurance that no more budget cuts will be requested.
pay attention to the Dec. meeting of the revenue estimating committee and the
December Regents meeting. the last round of cuts were ordered after the revenue
estimating committee reported that state revenues were down below predicted (and
budgeted) levels. the regents will consider a proposed $250 increased engineering
surcharge as well as the UI proposal for 6% tuition increase beginning in 2010.
it was suggested that if the UI were to close a service/area (ISU proposes
closing the university library between christmas and new year's
day) that staff might prefer such closings to occur after the holiday season,
which often means higher expenses than normal. another suggestion was allowing
people who could to work remotely and allowing voluntary furloughs. another
suggestion was setting all thermostats as a specified level and removing 1/2 the
fluorescent bulbs. barry replied that the budget committee he is on is
considering giving units incentives to reduce consumption rather than mandating a
standard campus-wide and having to make concessions for areas/units that could
not comply.
it was asked whether CoE would consider extending the surcharge to freshman and
sophomores as purdue does. barry thought that would be a disincentive for
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students to enroll as freshmen and so was not in favor; he would rather increase
the junior/senior surcharge.
barry asked what our preference would be - cut salary or benefits - if the
university is faced with another cut. allowing employees to make that choice
would be ideal. barry did agree that restoring salary money from the state would
be easier than restoring benefits.
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