UNO Staff Council Meeting
Minutes for September 21, 2012
Meeting began at 2:00 p.m. in Kirschman Hall, Room 137
Members & Faculty Present: See Sign-In Sheet
Guest Speaker, President Peter Fos
Retirement Incentives
o Tenured Faculty

UL System has a policy that offers a retirement incentive equivalent to 50% of the
faculty member’s annual salary. This policy offers the incentive only to tenured faculty.

At UNO, 25 tenured faculty members took this incentive. 5 left August 1, 2012. The
other 20 will leave in January. This will not be a savings in the current fiscal year, since
they are given half their salary. However, that is 25 less people that will be on the
budget next fiscal year.
o Classified Employees

State Civil Service also has an incentive plan for classified employees.

If eligible, employee gets a percentage of what their retirement would be – ends up
being about 25-30% of salary.

At UNO, 28 classified employees took this incentive. Once the employee agrees to the
incentive, they leave right away.
o Non-Classified Staff

There is no state approved incentive to retire.
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Budget Cuts
o Our latest budget cut was our largest in UNO’s history, which unfortunately did result in some
employees losing their jobs. There was no other choice.
o One option recommended by Deans was to eliminate 4 academic programs, which would have
affected 14 tenured faculty. However, this would have had a domino effect which would have
hurt students with classes offered and degree offerings.
o President Fos eliminated 2 non-classified positions in his own office. We no longer have
University Counsel. Everyone was touched by budget cuts.
o President Fos’ hope was that during the budget cuts, everyone would know what was going on
(transparency) so no one would be surprised. He formed 2 committees – an academic and nonacademic committee. He was later told that the people affected didn’t know what was going on,
and thought the committees would communicate the information to those parties. Dr. Fos would
like any suggestions on how to do this better next time in order to keep everyone informed.
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Mandatory Leave Policy
o E-Mail went out campus wide
o This policy is a result of a suggestion from the committee President Fos formed
o Committee suggested 10 mandatory vacation days per year. President Fos didn’t like the idea
initially because he did not want to tell people when to take off and affect their personal lives
by dictating vacation schedules. Also, he felt it seemed like a furlough. After a lot of discussion,
they decided on 7 days and a comp time policy.
o Comp time will allow you to work extra time to earn comp time, so that you wouldn’t lose your
vacation time. This needs to be approved by immediate supervisor.
o The mandatory leave was going to start with 4 days between July and December 2012, however,
we lost electricity for 2 days during Hurricane Isaac, so this made up 2 of the days. There will
only be 2 days this half of the fiscal year, and those are the 2 preceding the Christmas holiday.
o The campus will be closed on these days, and they expect to save $50,000-$75,000/year
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Mid-Year Cuts
o President Fos is getting mixed signals on whether or not there will be a mid-year cut.
o Newspaper article said state found $130M dollars. If they would have said this in June, there
would not have been any cuts. State probably new about this back in June.
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Land near Burger King
o Next week, a bid will go out to lease a piece of land next to Burger King.
o There is another food vendor interested in the space.
o This will be about $120,000/year ground lease.
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Bookstore Outsourcing
o Idea was brought up at a Vice President’s meeting because Southeastern outsourced their
bookstore to Follett.
o Recommended by non-academic committee.
o UNO is the only university in the state that does not outsource the bookstore.
o Bookstore makes more on retail items than textbooks. When outsourced, they focus more on
retail and bring in more money.
o Delgado outsourced to Barnes & Noble. The day they signed, B&N gave them $1M, every
employee was retained and got 10% over a certain level.
o We don’t need to buy anything, so there is no inventory to carry.
o For future budget cuts, no one from the Bookstore would need to be let go because they will not
be funded by UNO. If we don’t outsource, they would also get cut next time we get a budget cut.
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Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges (SACS COC)
o This issue is a bigger problem than the budget
o We are accredited by a regional accrediting agency SACS COC
o We were last reaffirmed for 10 years in 2005. They were nice to us after Hurricane Katrina hit
(They came and visited us in Spring, then Katrina hit in August, and in December they
reaccredited UNO)
o Mid-term every 5 years we need to do a report, which would have been 2010, but they pushed it
back to 2012 (gave us 2 extra years)
o We are now in monitoring status for 2 years because of some issues in our report.
o 2 big issues are:

We do not evaluate enough (Do students like our food, bookstore, police, UC, classes,
etc…) to find out if we’re reaching our goals. We do a bad job of that and they caught
us.

Academics – some departments don’t have learning objectives set up to prove that they
learn or how they learn.
o August 2012 we had a site visit from switching from LSU to UL system (standard called “Change
of Ownership or Control”) where we needed to prove to SACS that switching systems didn’t
affect the way we do business other than different policies
o Our reports are in bad shape don’t address what SACS is looking for.
o We need to avoid getting put on probation. What SACS probation means for UNO:

18 months to get off, you lose your accreditation, and all federal funding will stop
(including pell grants & financial aid).

We would be down to ~4,800 students and half the staff wouldn’t be here.

Required to send a letter to every alumni, every student’s parent, donors, grants and
tell them the university is on probation

Probation is almost worse than losing accreditation
o How are we going to fix this problem that is bigger than budget issues?

Identified a SACS liaison on campus, Dr. Bill Sharpton from Education, who has a lot of
experience in accreditation.

New office created called Office of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness to make
sure we assess everything and that we do what we have planned

Purchase new software called Track DAT – easy way to generate reports

Engaged a consultant who worked at UT Tyler and passed all 84 SACS standards
o We have done some assessments, but are a little behind for our next report due in 2 years
o We need a master plan for the next 10 years
o Ad Astra which helps with room assignments and utilization
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Admissions
o We have recruiters leaving the city to recruit students for the first time since Fos is here
o President Fos and Dave Meredith (Director of Admissions) will meet with 15 principals from both
public and private high schools around the city that are college preparatory to let them know
about UNO
o We had 10,900 last fall and we have 10,100 this year. Sounds like we lost 800 students, but we
used to get 600-700 students who took remedial classes which we cannot take anymore. We are
right where we need to be, given that we didn’t really recruit this year.
o More students means more tuition dollars, which makes us less reliant on state funding
o Dave Meredith and the Admissions staff is out recruiting students and Dr. Kemker (Vice President
of Student Affairs & Enrollment Management) is trying to retain current students
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State Funding
o This current year, 34% of our budget is state funded
o In 2007 it was 64%
o We have to find ways to make our own money by getting more students
o State would like to see us funded at only 25%
o Press said that 130 people lost their jobs, but in actuality it was 15 ½ people who left
involuntarily. The others retired or vacant positions weren’t refilled.
o 5 faculty members were given a terminal contract, which means next year they won’t have a
job. If you count these in, it was 2 ½ people who lost their jobs.
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President Fos’ Investiture
o Investiture is more about UNO than about President Fos
o Trying to get donors to give money to the university
o We will have a “Year of Excellence” and hold an event every 2 months
o Event Schedule

Thursday, November 8 at 7:00 p.m. in the University Center - Homer Hitt election

Sponsored by Founder’s Club – Ticketed event, but FREE

Speakers: James Carville & Mary Madeline

Friday, November 9 – President Fos will attend events:
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Breakfast with Legislators
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Lunch with Business leaders
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Basketball game at the Arena (celebrity guests, incentive for Faculty/Staff
admissions)

Saturday, November 10 – Service Day

Students will choose something to do (build a house, clean-up project)

Monday, November 12

Morning: Ribbon cutting ceremony to rededicate the UC

2:00: Investiture Ceremony (Free, everyone invited)
o Governor, Mayor, Congressman Richmond, Senator Murray,
Representative Brossett

6:00: Gala at Hyatt Regency Hotel
o Tickets are $250, Faculty/Staff get reduced price of $175 – includes
dinner, Cocktail hour, and live entertainment (Paul Varisco and the
Milestone and Irma Thomas will perform)
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Scholarships
o General Scholarship fund of $12.5M to get high quality students to come here, the majority of
which comes out of the operating fund. We need more to come from endowed scholarships to
help buffer future budget cuts.
o Athletics

Division I requires 73 scholarships, we had 20 last year

President Fos gave Athletics $1.04M for the other 53 scholarships, which increases our
scholarship fund
o Board of Regents put a moratorium on endowed scholarships because there were more requests
than money
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Marketing/Advertising
o New commercial airing on WWL

WWL shot it for free because we bought air time

All UNO students in the commercial

Voice over is John Larroquette, native New Orleanian

Normally charges $500M, but charged us $25M (the only money spent on the
entire commercial)

There will be 4 episodes (commercials)

Movie theatre advertising

Cox cable has picked it up
o Hired a new Vice President for Communications, Marketing, & Public Relations, Dr. Kevin McLin,
a native New Orleanian who was also Michael Jackson’s publicist
o Came up with the tag line “Heartbeat of the Crescent City”
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Employee to Student Ratio
o Southeastern has 15,000 student and 1,400 faculty/staff
o We have 10,100 students and we have 1,700 staff
o UL system is asking why we need 300 more people with less students
o We will need to be really strategic when hiring people back
Q & A Session – see separate document.
Executive Committee Reports – nothing to report.
Derek moved all Staff Council new business to next meetings unfinished business.
Meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.
Next meeting will be held