THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
STAFF SENATE
(NORMAN CAMPUS)
Wednesday September 16, 2009
Chair Diana Fitzpatrick called the meeting to order at 1:33 p.m.
in the Governors and Regents Room of the Oklahoma Memorial Union.
Officers present – Diana Fitzpatrick, Chair; David Houck, Chair-Elect;
Elaine Bradshaw, Recording Secretary
Officers
absent – Linda McCarty, Immediate Past Chair
Staff
Present – Melissa Lane, Administrative Coordinator
Representatives present – Hourly Employees Council: Linda Smith, Cecilia
McEwen, Cindy Simpson, Carolyn Irons, Mary Peters, Karen Stark, Neil Shock, Ed
Fontaine, Etta Walden, Ruthann Shaffer; Informational Staff Association: Chris
Cook, Jose De La Cruz, Debbie Copp, Michael Goodwin, Bruce Alcock, Dick Trim; Organizational
Staff Council: Fran Stephens, Cathy Trujillo, Winona Bark, Cathy Brister,
LaDonna Sullivan; Administrative Staff Council: Robbie Wahnee
Representatives absent — Hourly Employees Council: Tim Winkelman, Brandie
Wright; Organizational Staff Council: Nancy
Matthews; Administrative Staff Council: Mechelle Gibson
Guests present — Krystal Cushing, Chair of Personnel Policies
Committee; Samuel Fellows, Member of Personnel Policies Committee; Liz Cooley,
Co-Chair of Staff Awards Committee; David Kizer, Chair-Elect of Hourly Employees
Council; Lezlie Pilkington, Administrative Staff Council Proxy;
Terri Sarsycki, Member of Administrative Staff Council;
GHISLAIN D'HUMIERES, DIRECTOR, FRED
JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART
Ghislain
spoke about the Museum’s current construction, new Adkins Collection, and new
programs to attend. The museum will
remain open during the two years of construction and is fully active for
students and others. There are programs
available for children and adults after working hours. The second Friday of the month the Museum has
teamed up with the City of Norman for a Program called Art “a la CART”. The program has live music, art activities,
and a short film. Four times a year
there is an open exhibition that has food and music, by invitation only but
everyone is invited. Ghislain will
provide the invitation to the Staff Senate office and the invitation will be
distributed by mass e-mail to all of the staff members.
DR. JAN SIMMONS, UNIVERSITY OUTREACH, CONFERENCE PROS
Jan presented a power point of all
of the services that are available through the Conference Pros. The Conference Pros are a part of the
College of Continuing Education. They
can plan your conference or event no matter how big or small, on campus or off. Their services include but are not limited
to, providing AV equipment, professional assistance with the equipment, graphic
designers, they know how to fill out and process University paperwork, meeting
planning/conference logistics, catering, and discounted rates by working
through them. The best part about using
their services is that the dollars earned stay on campus. They also are able to negotiate prices for
you to get the best available price possible.
NICHOLAS
KEY, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, OZONE
OZONE is a standardization
of all student businesses and services. This
will streamline services for students. The
students will be able to check email, look at their financial aid, pay their
Bursar bill, and much more. The new
portal is a true University project that over ten departments have come
together to create. These are all brand
new services, not just the old services transferred into a new portal. There is training available on line and face
to face training will be offered after oZONE goes completely live. The system will be down starting September 18
for ten days. This will allow them time
to enter over 2 million student’s information and test the system to try and
make sure the system is accurate and reliable.
All of the system will be up on September 28 except for the pay option;
this will not be available until January 2010.
CICS will also be replaced by the new system but continue to use CICS
throughout the rest of fall. For more
information you can visit their website at www.ou.edu/ozone.info
JULIUS HILBURN AND NICK
KELLY, RENEWAL OF BENEFITS
Julius wanted to discuss
three main topics; the 2010 health renewal, the report about retiree medical,
and the defined contribution plan. This
is our first year for renewal of benefits with Blue Cross and Blue Shield. In our contract that was negotiated last year
there were caps put in place so that our benefits could not go up more than
this amount every year. This year it
looks as though everyone will be paying those caps. It will be a 10% increase for the PPO and a
12% increase for the HMO. The enrollment
period for this year will probably be November 13-22. In regards to the retiree medical plan, the
final report is almost written and once completed it will then be submitted to
President Boren for review. Debbie Copp
asked what the similarities and differences were between the report seen last
year and the report submitted to the President.
Julius said that those employees nearest retirement would be shielded
from changes and the further away the more likely for change. Everyone will be impacted in some way, but
the committee has maintained their guidelines to not affect changes on
employees near retirement. The report
has maintained the same groups as before.
And there is now no rush to retire to receive the better benefits. Whichever group an individual falls into when
the plan is implemented is the same group they will remain in even if they
continue to work. With the defined contribution
plan there has been a committee formed to look at better management and
oversight of our plans. The goal is to
improve participation, experience, and education. The committee recommendation should be ready
to be shared by October or November of 2009.
CHAIR’S COMMUNICATIONS
Diana met with Nick Hathaway on Thursday and they talked
about budget, the University had anticipated the state appropriations correctly
and is still on track. There was also a
question brought up in a member group meeting about the state legislation
having all monthly employees become bi-monthly.
This plan will not affect any University employees.
ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES OF July 15, 2009
On
motion by Cathy Brister, the minutes of the July 15, 2009, Staff Senate meeting
were accepted.
OTHER COMMUNICATIONS
Hourly
Employees Council: President
Linda Smith said HEC met on September 15, 2009. The new committee members
received packets containing their constitution and other information. The group spent time getting to know each
other and signed up for committees.
Organizational Staff Council: President Fran Stephens said OSC met
on September 3, 2009. The committee set all of its meeting places for the
year. They are going to also have a
speaker’s seminar like ASC.
Informational Staff Association: President Chris Cook said ISA met September 2, 2009. This was the
biggest turnout for their meetings that he had ever seen. There were about 20 people present. They set their schedule for the rest of the
year.
Administrative Staff
Council: President Robbie Wahnee said ASC will meet on September 15, 2009. Nick Hathaway was their guest speaker, he
spoke about the budget. Their theme this
year for speakers is motivation.
STANDING COMMITTEES
Awards
Committee: Co-Chair Liz Cooley said the
committee had a meeting on September 10 and selected their chairs for
committees. The committee is thinking
about changing the retirement gift this year and would like everyone’s feedback
on what would be a good gift.
Communications
Committee: No
report
OU
Staff Week Committee: No report
Personnel
Policies Committee: Chair Krystal Cushing reported that the
committee is working on clearing up old items that the Senate has charged them
with. They also set their meetings for
the rest of the year.
Staff
Professional Development: No report
Ad
Hoc Committee (for member group Website Guidelines): Diana
reported that Robbie was still working on the website guidelines. There are going to have to be other avenues
explored because what Robbie was working on has fallen through.
Ad
Hoc Committee (for review of member group’s constitution and bylaws): Chair
Debbie Copp said that the committee has been working very hard to prepare a
member group template and they have now moved onto the Staff Senate constitution.
CORRESPONDENCE
REPORTS
The
following reports were linked to the April agenda:
Staff Senate Foundation account report.
Minutes of Employment Benefits Committee meeting
for April and May 2009
OLD BUSINESS
EBC: Debbie Copp wanted to ask everyone to please
be ready for this upcoming year. She
said that there are things headed our way and we need to provide feedback.
NEW BUSINESS
Member Groups Constitution Template: Debbie asked that all of the member group
presidents please take the template back to their group and discuss. The committee worked very hard to prepare
this for the member groups and would hope that they would all adopt this new
constitution. By doing this it will
create unity between all of the constitutions and make information easier to
find, because it will all be located in the same place. All member groups will write their own bylaws
and that is where the group will become their own individual. If the constitution is adopted by the member
groups their current constitution will have to be suspended and then the new
constitution can be adopted.
Additional Appointments to Standing Committees: A sheet of additional volunteers for standing
committees was given to everyone. Diana
wanted to explain that there was some confusion with people this year; they did
not know they had to volunteer every year.
We are going by the basics and the constitution now; we do not know how
it was done before. So by email the
Senate will vote to either accept the additional volunteers or not.
Personnel Policies Committee, Extended Sick Leave Proposal: PPC member Sam Fellows presented the Senate
with a proposal about ESL. After
everyone received the hand out questions were asked. Debbie Copp questioned if this would be a
good time for the Senate to push for this, with the current budget situation. Fran Stephens asked if the Senate could table
the issue for discussion at a later time.
It was decided that the member group Presidents would take the Proposal
back to their groups for discussion and report back next month at the Senate
meeting. They also need to look at the
document and decide if they like the way it is actually written or if
adjustments should be made. Also the PPC
is going to provide some additional numbers of how many people have more than 6
months of ESL and how many hours there are.
MISCELLANEOUS
ADJOURNMENT
As there was no further business, the meeting
adjourned at 3:45 p.m.
NEXT REGULAR MEETING: October 21, 2009 in
Ellison Hall Room 132
Respectfully submitted,
Melissa Lane
Administrative Coordinator
Elaine Bradshaw
Recording Secretary