STAFF COUNCIL MEETING
Thursday, May 19, 2005
2:00 p.m., Chappell 102
Present: Carol Brown (presiding), Ann Portwood, Neil Jones, Patrice Terrell, Monica Wood, Gina Peavy, Doris Henderson, Jason Hitchcock, Mike Augustine, and Quintus Sibley. Excused: Myrna Olsson-Owen. Absent: Paula Jefferson, Randy Gilman, Cindy Potts, Sheryl Snow, Julia Jordan, and Rose Murner. Guest: Diane Kirkwood.
Call to Order. Carol Brown called the meeting to order at 2:05 p.m.
Approval of Minutes. A motion was made, seconded, and approved to accept the minutes of the March meeting as written.
Introduction. Carol introduced Diane Kirkwood, our new Director of Human Resources. Diane briefed the group on some of the things going on in HR and asked that we let her know what she and her office could do to help us. She did say that HR will be moving to the Hall House once renovations are completed. Neil Jones thanked Diane on behalf of all the staff for her work on implementation of the staff equity pay raises.
Updates.
Name Change. Gina Peavy gave an update on the university name change. The committee discussed three options concerning this issue:
1) drop the issue completely
2) change to an entirely different name (There are several BOR stipulations concerning this.)
3) keep our name as is and proceed with a new identity campaign—a virtual campaign that would give us a new visual identity.
The committee decided to go with the last option. University Communications is working on developing our new visual identity, and Gina will keep us updated on the issue.
Election Process. Neil and Doris Henderson are working on the election process. Delegates rolling off this year: from the academic affairs division are Paula Jefferson and Neil Jones (moving to chair, so his delegate position will be vacant); from the business and finance division are Cindy Potts and Sheryl Snow; from the president’s area is Mike Augustine; and from the student affairs division is Doris Henderson. If staff have someone in mind they’d like to nominate to be a delegate, he/she needs to send the potential nominee’s name to Doris, and she’ll contact the person to see if he/she is interested in being placed on the ballot. Staff who are interested in serving as delegates themselves should contact Doris.
Statutes. Neil gave an update on where we are with the statutes and bylaws revisions. He distributed a draft of the revisions, and the council decided to table discussion on them until the next meeting so that we’ll have time to carefully review the documents. Until the meeting, though, Neil asks that we send any ideas to him and feel free to discuss the issues via e-mail.
Special Thanks. Carol and Gina thanked everyone for helping make the Spring Staff Excellence Award Ceremony such a success.
Other Business.
Patrice Terrell gave a treasurer’s report. We have $1,549.77 in our Foundation account and $1912.55 in our regular account. We decided that we would use some of our Foundation funds to provide doughnuts, coffee, and juice at the new staff employee orientations each month. Besides funding a staff development request, we also decided to purchase a training video for HR and a computer for Physical Plant with our state funds.
As the staff development contact person, Monica Wood receives numerous brochures and pamphlets about training opportunities and workshops. We discussed some ways in which Monica could share this information with interested staff. We’ll discuss this idea more at our next meeting.
The annual ice cream social sponsored by Staff Council and Dr. Leland will be on Tuesday, June 14, at 2:30 in MSU Dining Hall. We look forward to seeing everyone there.
Adjournment. The meeting was adjourned at 3:05 p.m. The last regularly scheduled meeting for this year is June 16, 2:00 p.m. in Chappell 102. Other meetings may be added as needed.