April 3, 2006 - Teleconference

Minutes approved 6-26-06

Present:
University of Illinois -
Chicago Campus - Marietta Giovanelli*
Springfield Campus - Gerald Burkhardt
Urbana-Champaign Campus - Vera Mainz*, Marilyn M. M. Marshall, Stacey Wilson
Indiana University - Michael Halla*, Isabel Piedmont*
University of Iowa - Ella Born*, Kathy Klein, Sheri Sojka*
University of Minnesota - Randy Croce*
Northwestern University - Rebecca Griffiths*, Jason Grocholski*
Ohio State University - Jay Young*
Purdue University - Kristie Bishop* Dan Leaird, Pat Mull*
University of Wisconsin - Bruce Beck*
(*Indicates voting members)
Absent: University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Pennsylvania State University.

Vera Mainz, University of Illinois and current CIC Chair, welcomed the group. All present introduced themselves.

1) News and Updates

University of Wisconsin
¢ State does not have enabling legislation to allow collective bargaining for faculty and academic professionals. Legislature brought in the bill.
¢ A former Dean at the University assumes the role of Provost today.
¢ A lobbying organization, ASPRO, sent a letter recently on tax limits. The President disputes their stance.
¢ The local news media recently has published profiles of the academic staff.

University of Iowa
¢ Kathy Klein is the new Vice President elect for their staff council. April 1, 2006 is the start of the new term.
¢ The President of the University took a new position at Cornell University. Currently a search committee is being put together to look for a replacement. Unfortunately, it is expected to be comprised mostly of Board of Regents members. The mind-set of the Board is to find a "business-minded" candidate. An Interim President is expected to be appointed soon.

University of Minnesota
¢ Randy Croce and Frank Douma are serving on a committee to review the equity of Academic Professional and Administrators' salaries across and within job classifications, as well as review compensation under the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act).
¢ Strategic Planning is currently underway. Six colleges have now been merged into three. In one of the new "merged" colleges, all administrative staff were told to reapply for their jobs and have no guarantees of being re-hired.
¢ The Senate passed a resolution in support of retaining the current personnel and, by policy, the President must respond to the Senate in 90 days.

Ohio State University
¢ The Staff Advisory Committee presented a report on compensation and benefits to the President, who reacted favorably. The President was prepared with a list of the Council's accomplishments, as well.
¢ The Staff Committee, along with the President, gave a reception to celebrate their 20th anniversary.
¢ The Staff Committee was invited to present to the Board of Trustees the role Academic Professionals play in the University.

Purdue University
¢ The Faculty Affairs Committee voted unanimously to indicate to the Nominating Committee that the APSAC Chair be included in the list of Senate Advisors. This can be accomplished without changing the by-laws. Since reapportionment will be coming up soon in the full Senate, they will then be able to lobby for voting representation.
¢ With the implementation of SAP, sick leave data will be collected for a couple of years before a decision is made on changing the way it is currently accrued for faculty and A/P staff.
¢ Pat Mull, as APSAC Chair, has been appointed to a 14 member task force which will review the Purdue University Strategic Plan (what was accomplished, what should have been done differently, what was not done). This will give the Board of Trustees a starting point for developing the next Strategic Plan.
¢ Purdue Women's Basketball Coach, Kristy Curry, accepted Texas Tech's offer to be their new coach.

Northwestern University
¢ There is a 5-10 year plan underway regarding benefit changes for faculty and staff. The University is being compared to others and there is a huge retirement discrepancy from faculty to staff.
¢ The University is considering adding an observance of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. to its holidays.
¢ Support thus far for the Academic Professional Council has been extremely limited - no staff or phone support. However, the Council was given an 18-20% increase in the budget for computer support. This is a small step forward but they were able to purchase a laptop to house information. The purchase of three laptops in three years is planned.

Indiana University
¢ The new Interim Provost will meet with the Staff Council on May 17th.
¢ The Director of Affirmative Action attended the last Council meeting to discuss the lack of a formal search and screening procedure for hiring professional staff and upper administration.
¢ At a recent meeting, the Vice President for Administration discussed a vacation time donation policy. The Board of Trustees would not support the plan as they believe staff already receive "too much" vacation.
¢ Staff received an email showing the monetary value of their benefits and salary.
¢ There is currently an initiative underway to review the compensation of AP staff members. This is a two-year process, with some results expected this summer, but drastic changes are not expected. A comparison of benefits was done with other Indiana employers. The University's benefits are, on average, 9% higher than other employers are so, for the study, staff reduced the comparative salaries of other employers by 4%. The committee is comprised of human resource personnel and VP's as well as one staff council representative on the committee.

University of Illinois
¢ At the Urbana-Champaign campus the new Provost started work on April 1.
¢ The Academic Professional campus-wide awards were given to six employees. The award consists of $2,000, tax free, to the employee and $1,000 to the employee's unit.
¢ The UIUC Senate has proposed a statute amendment concerning how unit changes are done. This concerns the creation of new academic units, such as departments, as well as any changes to existing academic units, such as mergers, terminations, etc. The statute amendment further states that faculty votes within the affected units are required for any of these changes, as well as a vote of the faculty-student senate.
¢ At the Chicago campus, the Senate Executive Committee recommended adding three voting positions to Academic Professionals. This action will require a by-laws change.

2) Minutes The minutes from the January 23, 2006 meeting were discussed, changes made, and approved.

3) CIC APSC "Official" Status as a Working Group

Vera, University of Illinois, opened up the issue for the group to discuss. Rebecca, Northwestern University, recommends not pursuing it. It does not seem like the best way to concentrate our efforts at this time. Marietta, University of Illinois, requested that the group pursue "official" status but not request staff support. Vera, University of Illinois, states that only 10-12 groups are officially recognized and received support yet there are at least 50 other groups listed on the site as unofficial. Isabel, Indiana University, requests to rephrase our request to be that we are listed on the web site somewhere as un-official. Sheri, University of Iowa, reminds the group that our original request was to have access to the web site -- and the group was turned down -- yet faculty groups have this status. We do not seek web support - only to be listed. Ella, University of Iowa, feels that any efforts to forge a relationship with CIC are going to be difficult due to Barbara Allen. Perhaps the best approach is to discuss this issue with our respective University Provosts and informally ask for support with the goal being to ultimately be recognized and listed on the web site as an un-official CIC working group. Pat, Purdue University, stated that perhaps we are misunderstanding the lists on the web site. These appear to be subcommittees formed from special task forces of the Provosts and that most un-official groups are not listed. Randy, University of Minnesota, stated that anything we decided to do would require Provost support and, thus, lobbying the Provosts. He felt there are other issues that will take precedence.

Vera, as Chair, recommended dropping the issue for this meeting. The group should study the listings on the website and discuss at the next meeting how to proceed.

From the minutes of the October 17, 2005, meeting:

After lengthy discussion of our three options, a poll was taken of each institution as to how they felt we should proceed.

Option 1: Official affiliation with CIC - General consensus was that this should be our ultimate goal
Option 2: Operate independently of the CIC - Consensus does not want to pursue this option.
Option 3: Continue to function as a CIC APSC Ad Hoc group - General consensus was to continue as an Ad Hoc group using the name CIC APSC while we pursue formal recognition.

4) Website

The URL is for the CIC APSC website is www.cic-apsc.wisc.edu. Colleen McCabe, Wisconsin, created the site and is maintaining it. Colleen noted in her original email about the website that she pulled logos off the individual campus web sites. If they are not the ones you want, please provide another one to Colleen. Also, if you provide URLS to your campus and your councils, Colleen will link them to the front page, as she did with Wisconsin.

5) Updates on Sub-Committees

Compensation and Advancement Committee - Isabel, Indiana University, said the group had discussed an email survey to gather information about the issue and how each campus handles (is it centralized?). A benefits summary was sent out already and had received feedback from some institutions, not all. A question on staff recognition programs will be added to the compensation and advancement committee questionnaire, not the benefits summary.

Performance Review - Have not met, no activity at this time.

Job Security - Randy Croce, University of Minnesota, stated that the group drafted three questions/categories: layoff/non-renewal of contract, length of contracts, and rehiring of those terminated for lack of resources or program closings. Randy will distribute a list of six questions to develop best practices. We could use this issue for lobbying as well.

Additional Issues
Isabel, Indiana University, wished to discuss local shared governance policies. She asked which institutions hold seats on their respective Senates and how they gained those seats. Vera will send a survey to the group requesting this information. Randy, University of Minnesota, will send their policy so that it will appear in the minutes.

The next meetings will be:
June 26, 2006, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. - teleconference.

Call toll free: 800 347-8268
Meeting ID: 2428372
Meeting Password: 8482227

October 15-16, 2006 at the Big Ten Center, Chicago, IL - face-to-face.

The group adjourned at 9:53 a.m.

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