Staff Senate Minutes

March 9, 2005

Hamersly Library 107

 

 

1.                  Call to order 8:35am

2.                  Roll Call:  Absent: Karleen Adams, Lenore Eliasson

3.                  Guests:  Melody Bywater

4.                  Staff President Announcements and comments:  Martha voiced her thanks for the vote of confidence from the Staff Senate as she finishes out John McArdle’s tenure as President.

5.                  The minutes were reviewed and approved as written.

6.                  Dr. Conn addressed the senate:  He gave the Staff Senate a nod of approval for the work they have done concerning the Customer Service policy.  His recommendations to the Staff Senate, was to take them to both the Student and Faculty Senate.  Martha Boyd has given copies to both the Faculty and Student Senates to review.  Martha and Andrew Russell-Wynings will be meeting with them when they return Spring term. He also talked about the University Discrimination and Sexual Harassment policies.  His directions to Staff Senate was to re-visit both policies and recommend additional changes if needed.  This is done in response from the directive of the Chancellor and Governor that the seven Oregon universities re-visit these policies and make recommendations.  Staff Senate will focus on: an assessment of their efficacy, an assessment of campus practices and beliefs surrounding these matters and recommendations for additional or changed policies, procedures and practices.  Three staff members have been appointed to the campus task force looking into the policies.  The staff members are Andrew Russell-Wynings, Tina Fuchs and Diana Leos.  Staff Senate will review the policies and give their recommendations to the three task force members, who will then in turn, take them to the entire task force group.

7.                  OLD BUSINESS:

a.       Website:  There is now a shell of the staff senate website at www.wou.edu/president/staffsenate.  Anne and Kathy will work on getting the minutes from previous meetings posted onto the website.

b.      Customer Service:   John McArdle, Andrew Russell-Wynings and Martha Boyd took the Customer Service proposal to Dr. Conn on February 17th.  His recommendations are outlined above in his address to the Staff Senate.

c.       Staff Development:  The Draft of recommendations for Staff Development funds were reviewed.  Martha will add one last question concerning how the information is moved through campus and how staff will eventually be notified of funds available.  One suggestion was the general email to staff each year with the request form attached.  Martha will forward our recommendations to Judy Vanderburg.  We will invite Judy to our next meeting to discuss the draft recommendations.

d.      Academic Infastructure -  Teresa   reported that the Academic Infastructure team had not met and she would let us know if and when they do.

e.       Food Bank:  Lenore was out due to surgery.  We will get an update from her next month.

 

8.                  NEW BUSINESS:

a.       Bylaws: will again be tabled until the next meeting to give the senate time to address the Harassment and Discrimination policies again.

b.      Staff Mission Statement:  Anne suggested we expand on our mission statement and post them on our website.  All agreed to look at this further next month.

c.       Harassment and Discrimination policies:  Senate will meet Wednesday, March 16th at 8:30am in HL 205.  Senate members will come to this meeting with information and ideas concerning the current policies and the senate will come up with recommendations.  That feedback will be given to Andrew, Tina and Diana at a later meeting date, time and place TBA.

 

Our next Staff Senate meeting will be Friday, April 1st in HL 205.

 

Meeting was adjourned at 9:50am.