STAFF SENATE MEETING MINUTES August 17, 2011
President Kristie Galy presided over the August 17, 2011, Staff Senate meeting held at Peabody Hall, Room 225, on the LSU Campus at 10:30 a.m.
ATTENDANCE
Senators
Executive/Administrator/ Manager
A Torres, Donna (’12)
A Exner, Patti (’13)
Service/Maintenance
P Chaney, Carolyn (’13)
P Dixon, Evelyn (’13)
P Matkovic, Igor (’14)
Professional/Non-Faculty
P Carruth, Holly (’12)
Pr Chiasson, Denise (’12)
P Fields, Tim (’12)
P Frazier, James (’12)
P Kimball, Lynn (’12)
P Thibodeaux, Seth (’12)
Pr Verma, Lisa (’12)
P Galy, Kristie (’13)
P Guillory, Michael (’13)
P Landry, Carolyn (’13)
P Thomas, Joseph (’13)
P Winchell, Blake (’13)
P David, Emmett (’14)
P Gothreaux, Chad (’14)
P Millican, Tammy (’14)
P Moreau, Scott (’14)
P Perkins, Julie (’14) Skilled Crafts
Pr Heil, Mark (’12)
P Adedeji, Funmilayo (’13)
Technical/Paraprofessional
A Pierce, Renee (’13)
P Sirman, Karen (’13)
P Love, Donna (’14)
Clerical/Secretarial
P Brown, Ruby (’12)
P Cooley, Judith (’13)
P Magee, Betty (’13)
P Collins, Judy (’14)
A - Indicates Absent
P - Indicates Present
Pr - Indicates Proxy
Sign-in Guests:
Denise Newell, Facility Development
Cody Wells, Student Government President
CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order by President Galy at 10:30 a.m.
ATTENDANCE
There was a quorum with three proxies noted.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
Senator Fields led the Pledge of Allegiance.
President Galy introduced guest: Denise Newell with Facility Development and Cody Well who is the Student Government President.
GUEST SPEAKER – Denise Newell with Facility Development
Staff Senate President Galy thanked Denise Newell for coming to speak to the Staff Senate regarding the Sustainability efforts on going at LSU.
Denise works in Facility Services, underneath Senator David in Planning, Design and Construction. She’s been here for almost three years, managing campus sustainability, and has worked with some of us. She actually presented to the Staff Senate about two years ago, and the committee on campus sustainability has done so much since then. She wanted to talk a little bit about campus sustainability, and present one of their current initiatives and tell the Senate how staff can get involved.
The LSU Green Initiative really took off in 2008, within an Executive Order from the Governor saying that LSU should be a leader in energy efficiency and conservation. So, the university started a report on the green initiative and what the campus was doing. In 2008, the university also started a campus committee for sustainability, and that's a cross-representation of staff, faculty, and students. The committee meets quarterly, it's an open, public meeting and anyone is welcome to attend. The students are really the driving force behind sustainability, so the students started many co-curricular activities. The students created a competition, called “Unplug” which is about energy reduction in the dorms. It shows significant savings, so they do it every year. They're very active with biking, so you've seen more bikers and new bike facilities. There's a website the students built about bike safety and maintenance. They're very passionate about saving and alternative forms of transportation. Then, in 2010 the university had an academic committee formed of about 15 faculty members that are looking to infuse sustainability curriculums within the undergraduate and graduate programs. That brings the conversation to staff, and in 2011 the committee is putting together some goals that are really measurable. The committee can see where we are, where strengths are, where we need to improve, and how to measure our progress. Denise thinks that's a good chance for staff to get on board with moving this forward.
The definition of sustainability is meeting the present needs without affecting the future generations to meet their needs. At LSU, we like to say we're being good stewards of our resources, both natural and economical. Senators have all heard of the triple-bottom line, and that's any combination of people, planet, and profit. These three are interconnected and inter-related. LSU’s human capital is really the people on campus, LSU staff, LSU faculty, and LSU human resources along with the service learning that the university does, and our community engagement. We have about 27,000 students and 5,000 faculty and staff on campus, so we have a lot of people. LSU’s natural capital is more the resources, and how we use energy, what we purchase, what we bring on to campus, and how we dispose our waste. LSU’s economic capital is really a side-benefit to sustainability because it offers an economic benefit. It's a result of how we're managing our resources. The university had some stimulus money come in, $3.2 million dollars is being used for energy and efficiency projects. The utility building is $22 million a year, so it's a lot to manage.
Chancellor Martin has taken a commitment to sustainability; this was a quote from him about three years ago. “It's important that LSU, as a positive model for our community and state as a flagship university.” So, IT Power Management was one of the forty projects that were identified by the Efficiency and Effectiveness Committee to counter our budget cuts. There are some pretty staggering numbers when you look at IT, the infrastructure, and the power that it consumes. There are national standards that say only 35 percent of people turn off their computer at night. LSU recommends that you do not turn off your computers, but 90 percent of people don't know how to set their power management settings and disable them. There's no management at night when employees go home. What's shocking is that 50 percent of desktop energy that it consumes is wasted as heat. The university is heating and cooling places just to take care of a lot of equipment. So, you have to think about all of that. Denise presented a typical model of a commercial building in North Carolina, where it shows that about 75 percent of the plug load in a building is PC and monitor related. The IT infrastructure is the other 40 percent of that. So it's a good place to start when the university talks about facility management and energy conservation. IT energy is expected to rise annually about 15 percent, per a report from the Department of Energy. This is due to the increase of new infrastructure, new computers, new hardware, and new peripherals. Denise also presented a bubble chart which shows opportunities within IT, high-impact initiatives with a large number in consolidation and virtualization of computers, which is something we need to move toward. It's really difficult to implement, so IT power management is something we need to look at.
Denise reported that it is estimated by the EPA, there's an Energy Star IT campaign, so many commercial, industry, and government organizations are jumping on board with power management. It's estimated to save 60 percent in PC related energy and importantly, it extends the life of the PC's, as they're not running 24 hours, 7 days a week. We formed another committee of members with Finance & Administration representation, Faculty Senate, Staff Senate where Senator Sirman served. Some representatives were technical support professionals around campuses and colleges. We looked at different software available, and we chose Power Smart. It's an automated solution that controls your PC monitor and computer power settings. We did multiple pilot studies over a full year, and used different numbers of users in groups. The EPA report showed about $70 dollars per PC per year in savings, and we wanted to prove if that number was real. They didn't include baselines, so we ran a two-week baseline to see if LSU was currently saving. Our initial investment was under $6 dollars per PC, so anything we save over that, we're saving annually. We've proven through pilot studies that we can save $20 dollars per PC, per year. So you multiply that over our 6,000 computers and it's a pretty big chunk. It shows one person's impact in a larger community. There are many case studies that are showing $100 dollars, per PC, per year. We have many different levels of computers, new and old, and the average is within $20 or $50 dollars. It's available, Facility Services purchased the software in 2010, and there's no charge to any departments. Anyone on the LSU domain has access and any laptop on the active directory. It does not affect servers, student laptops, or Mac computers. It may sometime in the future, but at this time it's just a simple installment. There was a question asked, “Wouldn't our IT people be able to install that?” Denise explained that most of our departments around campus have IT support, so you can contact them and tell them that you want to be added to Power Smart. They will install what's called a group policy, and the next time you reboot the software gets installed on your computer. You probably will never know it's there. It's been on our computers in Facility Services for a year and a half. Another question, “Shouldn't this be brought up to the Directors or Department Heads that this needs to be put on all these computers?” Denise explained that right now, administration decided to use an opt-in approach, so if you want to opt-in, there's an opportunity. Vicki Hood with Financial System Services is installing on most of finance and administration departments. What they're trying to do is identify people that need to remote in, because they need to be in a lower power setting. They're being careful, as we didn't want to enforce it and disrupt some critical activity. Denise explained that right now to be very conservative, you can set your settings more aggressive if you want, but after 30 minutes your monitor will turn off and your computer will have two different options, either low-power or power down. We recommend power down. Again, we've been using it for a year and a half and I ctrl + alt + delete, login, and there it is. The low power you would just shake a mouse and its back on. The low power does take some energy to store, memory on your computer, so that's why it doesn't save as much. It's about $8 dollars a PC a year, whereas power down is about $20 dollars or more. If you use monitor only, which is what FAS did originally it's about $5 dollars. Of course there are people we thought would want to opt out, and that's any health, life-safety, or security issues. Digital signage, it's not going to work and if Engineering is running any simulations or computer experiments.
Denise presented a running cumulative total showing, we're trying to reach 6,000 users and these are the departments that have opted in. We're at about 1,500 users currently. It's hard to tell, because some go in and some go out and until we're all on board with this, then we start seeing some steady users and savings. We plan to increase those numbers throughout the next year. Denise has presented to IT staff over the last year, we sent out a broadcast email you might have seen in July that we're getting ready for a press release at the end of August, and then over the next year we plan on using their software to get some friendly competitions just to see how we're doing. Maybe we will prove that we're saving more than $20 dollars. Denise mentioned some ways that you can get involved with campus sustainability. It's important that staff is on board with sustainability because as you start working here you create habits and make choices that really impact the students. They're looking at us as role models, and that's impacting the greater community. She mentioned our committee for sustainability; we always have different projects and phases. She presented a list of some of the programs that there analyzing and running business studies on. Some of those have moved into more of a campaign scenario, so they need help with outreach and those efforts as well. Denise mentioned that in the future they are looking at possibly some professional development for staff. So that might start out as some brown-bag lunches where we meet often and learn something new in sustainability.
Denise has contacted Human Resource Management regarding orientation to see if they can get the information out to new employees which is pretty easy. She has also done the same with student orientation. Denise mentioned an employer educator's program which would probably start out as something like building coordinators on campus. The building coordinators would train and bring practices. That's what the committee wants to do. Build a leg of framework where people can learn. Anytime there are any ideas for new initiatives, please bring that to the committee. Please attend our committee meetings, there are a bunch of resources we have available. Denise tries to update the website with current activities and new information around campus periodically. They have a list serv that has over 100 people right now. Denise doesn't push too much information, but just general updates on sustainability. Denise shared her contact information and asked if anyone had any questions?
Q: How can someone remote in with this software?
A: You probably need a more technical answer, but Denise knows there's a BPN option where you can remote in to your computer but right now, this software won't wake your computer up. So, you can remote in, but your screen won't look the same.
Denise thanked the Staff Senate for being able to present today.
APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES – July 20, 2011, Staff Senate Meeting
Page 5, Paragraph 5, line 4 reads: encouraged all Senator should read: encouraged all Senators
Page 5, Paragraph 5, line 8 reads: There was a lot should read: There were a lot
Page 6, Paragraph 3, line 4 reads: will order form should read: will order from
A motion to accept the minutes as amended was made by Senator David. The motion, seconded by Senator Landry, carried.
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
President Galy mentioned that this has been a very busy and productive month. Galy reported on July 27, she met with Brian Nichols, Executive Director with Administrative Services and Risk Management and Interim CIO. It was an introductory meeting. They discussed some of the initiatives in Information Technology Services and new ideas coming forward with Parking.
Galy reported also on July 27, the Executive Committee met with Provost Hamilton, Vice Provost Jane Cassidy, and Vice Chancellor Eric Monday regarding the status of the budget. Provost Hamilton discussed how the Flagship Coalition helped on our efficiencies and they will continue their work. Currently, there is about a $2 million dollar budget gap. They have closed the gap through increasing the fees paid by the Greek Organizations on campus and reducing band and music scholarships. There will be little impact at this point on departments and academic units. There will more than likely be a mid-year cut but as to the amount, that is unclear. There is some one time money the university is working with but we still have another year of struggle.
Galy reported on July 28, she met with Brian Nichols, Gary Graham, and Kevin Cope regarding a peer appeals board for faculty and staff and students. Student Government will appoint the student appeals board and the Faculty and Staff Senate will appoint a committee to hear parking appeals. The Faculty Senate has appointed two members and the Staff Senate will appoint three members. Parking, Traffic, and Transportation is requesting an independent board to make the appeals decisions. All of the administrative details regarding the appeals will be handled by Parking.
Galy reported on August 2, the Executive Committee met and Committees were assigned. The Executive Committee approved the purchase of Staff Senate T-shirts for all Senators instead of the polo shirts. Melonie Holden will circulate the order form for each Senator to choose their size.
Galy reported on August 4, she met with Dr. Sylvester regarding the smoke free campus initiative. Senator Magee has agreed to serve as the Staff Senate representative. Dr. Sylvester discussed the history of the smoke free campus and that several of our South Eastern Conference friends have gone smoke free.
Galy reported on August 5, she participated in the 275th Commencement where 772 graduates received their degrees including 16 staff members. It was quite an honor to participate as Staff Senate President, especially when the university commissioned an officer from the College of Education. Galy will send each staff member who graduated a congratulatory note on their achievement on behalf of the Senate!
Galy reported that August 15, was the first Chancellor’s Executive Meeting that she attended. Vice Chancellor Joe Alleva with Athletics reported that the window project in Tiger Stadium is coming along. The Tiger Athletic Foundation has approved seven additional suites which will be built in the Alex Box Stadium and they are looking at an expansion and preservation of the South End zone in Tiger Stadium. Vice Provost Jane Cassidy with Academic Affairs reported that there will likely be six major searches this year for various administrative positions around campus. Vice Chancellor Eric Monday with Finance and Administrative Services reiterated what we heard from the meeting with the Provost on July 27, 2011. Provost Jack Hamilton with Academic Affairs announced that the search committee is in place for the Provost position.
Galy reported on August 16, she was asked to serve on the search committee for Provost. The search committee had their first meeting today and it was introductory in nature. Earlier this morning, she met with Provost Hamilton to formally introduce herself as Staff Senate President and she expressed the Senate’s enthusiasm to help him in any way we can this year.
OLD BUSINESS
Staff Senator Representation
Past-President Gothreaux mentioned that at the Staff Senate April 2011 Staff Senate Meeting, he discussed the representation module which shows three different charts in color which reflects the growth in population and currently how many Senators are representing staff. He referred to the color chart that was included in the August Meeting Packet. The top chart reflects the current representation of the Staff Senate, the middle chart reflects the allocation represented per the Staff Senate Constitution which basically says that there will be one Senator for every 100 employees in each EEO category with a minimum of two Senators per category and if any individual category is greater than 66 employees, then one Senator could be added. Gothreaux explained that when you review the Clerical/Secretarial category which he believes is the category that was in question during the July Staff Senate meeting, that based upon the population in that EEO 4 category which is 410 staff employees but does not reflect all of the classified employees on campus, just in that category. There should be 4 Senators in that EEO 4 category. However, at the time this report was run, there were 5 Senators in that category. With one Senator’s term ending, calls for nominations had been sent out a couple of months prior to that for elections, soliciting nominations for someone to fill that impending vacancy. So, if one looks at the Professional/Non-Faculty category with over 1,800 employees in the EEO 3 category, there should be 19 Senators on the Staff Senate representing that group and there were currently 18 at the time on the Staff Senate. So, Gothreaux discussed that this is addressed in the very last chart, he explained to be both be in line with the by-laws as they were currently written as well as honor the call for nominations that had already gone out for the election that was under way, the Senate accepted that we would continue to have 5 senators in the EEO 4 category. Because there were that many seats at the time and we had already called for one person to replace the vacancy that was impending. However, the Executive Committee also discussed that in order to be in line with the by-laws that it would allow attrition to reduce that category to the appropriate number which is 4. But, until attrition were to happen, in other words, until someone either resigned or terms expired, we could do the new call for nominations for the new election cycle. The Senate would just be over one in that category and that we would live with that because we had sent out a call. We didn’t want to cancel that election in that EEO category in the midst of the election. However, about a month or so after the Executive Committee made that decision, it was announced by Senator Williamson that she was resigning her position because of duties that were keeping her away from her full Senate participation. As a result of that, within the same election cycle, we were able to receive through attrition the appropriate representation level which is 4, which is the current number of seats that we have in the EEO 4 category. So, while this does reflect that there would have been 5 after that election cycle, the fact that the roster currently shows 4 is not incorrect and it was not a change that had not been discussed. It’s just that attrition had occurred a lot sooner than the Executive Committee had anticipated. The Executive Committee thought that it would not happen until the following election cycle. So, Senator Gothreaux hopes that this discussion provides some clarification to the course of events over the last few months. If there are any questions, he’d be happy to entertain them about this.
Gothreaux commented that with regard to the By-laws Committee. During elections and reflected in the meeting minutes, there was discussion that we would be convening the By-laws Committee in order to address the representation level as well as some clarification about population among the EEO categories. What’s reflected here gives the appearance that the EEO categories are homogonous in that, for example, in the Technical/Paraprofessional category, all of those individuals in that EEO 5 category are unclassified. That in fact is not true, and we’ve only learned is just recently. Part of the problem there is The Senate has been receiving inconsistent information from Human Resources in terms of who is in what category and what comprises the EEO categories among the larger employee group. The employee groups reflected in our By-laws as who among the staff are represented by the Staff Senate. In terms of the representation on the Staff Senate, that is determined by the EEO categories. And so, if you look at our roster, everyone is in their respective titles, but we don’t use the EEO number; we use Professional/Non-Faculty or Clerical/Secretarial and so on which corresponds to these EEO numbers. Those groups are correct now. They were not for a couple of years and if you recall, we had the conversation about Senator Powers and some others at the time who Human Resources had incorrectly classified including a number of folks at the upper end of the administrative range of classified positions; and they had erroneously put them in the Professional/Non-Faculty category. That was corrected, though, last year. Having said that, the categories are now correct and the representation on our roster does have the right EEO category. But what is incorrect in this report are the employee groups because the EEO categories are blended in some cases. That has no bearing, however, on the representation of the Senate; it only means that if you are an employee of the campus and you are in one of those three employee groups, you are represented by the Senate in one way or another through these EEO categories. So, with that in mind, we did not convene the By-laws Committee meeting in the last months of the Senate year primarily because we wanted to meet someone in Human Resources that would be assigned by Human Resources Vice Chancellor A.G. Monaco, that had a commitment to helping the senate to keep this information correct and to providing the Executive Committee with reliable information, because this is very important to the future of the Senate. Unfortunately, we were sort of getting information but it was almost as if it was an afterthought. So, after talking with the Executive Committee and being appointed as Chair of the By-laws Committee again after the last Executive Committee meeting, Gothreaux has since had a conversation with A.G. A.G. has identified someone who will work exclusively with the Staff Senate on this issue and that person will be meeting with the Executive Committee at our next meeting to hear the importance of this issue with all of us, as well as the campus at large. Shortly thereafter, we will be convening the By-laws Committee to get busy with how representation is determined to make some changes so that, given the realities on campus now, or we may leave it alone. In the bigger picture, this is very important to the Senate and Sen. Gothreaux felt it was necessary to go back to this document since there seemed to be some confusion at the last meeting.
Q: Did Senator Powers run in her correct EEO category 4?
A: Yes she did.
Gothreaux explained that when that occurred about three years ago, Civil Service did a major reclassification and did away with GS levels and went to AS levels and all the other ones. At the time, Human Resources picked up the upper end of the AS series and put them in the EEO 3 category, which was incorrect. There are some folks, who in the Professional/Non-Faculty category, that are in the accounting series that are in EEO 3, but that is not the case for the administrative series; those are all in other EEO categories. Sen. Powers was actually appointed, if you will recall, so when she was appointed, we needed to fill the spot in EEO 3, and she was on the list at the time and she had been helping, as you know very well, on campus for so long. And she was the last runner up in the previous selections. So, when that spot became vacant, we approached her and asked if she wanted to fill it because we had a list that showed her in category EEO 3 that was wrong at the time. The Human Resource Representative, Gothreaux believes will be Leigh Bonfanti. Dave Hurlbert, who some of you may know is retiring at the end of this year and had helped with this in the past. Gothreaux explained to A.G. that the Senate really needs someone committed to this which A.G. understood. Gothreaux is confident that the roster is accurate, this information is accurate, but moving forward we need somebody who will give us the appropriate information so our representation numbers are accurate.
GUEST SPEAKER – Cody Wells, Student Government President
Staff Senate President Galy thanked Cody Wells for coming to speak to the Staff Senate regarding Student Government at LSU.
Cody Wells explained that he is the newly elected Student Body President. He is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, graduated from Parkview Baptist in 2008 and is a Mass Communications Senior concentrating Political Communications. Vice President Kathleen Bordelon and Wells have been in Student Government since freshman year together and he apologized that she could not attend today but decided to run together last year, won, and were installed in April. Wells looks forward to working with Staff Senate as well as Faculty Senate. Wells explained that Student Government has three branches, Executive which is in charge of our budget and coordinating our events. We have different departments within our Executive branch and each is overseen by Director and an Assistant Director which includes transportation, athletics, academics, finance, campus development, student outreach and first year experience. Those departments in the Executive branch coordinate with committees in our Student Senate, which is comprised of about 75 seats from the different colleges on campus and depending on how many students are in each colleges determines how many representatives for that college. The Student Senate is primarily there for releasing votes on student opinions on things, on the local, state, and institutional level. They also debate spending bills on how SG are to spend the different student fees they take in as well as approve all of Wells appointments, and then SG have the judicial branch which is the check and balance and keeps the Executive and Legislative Branches in line. Wells mentioned that they also have a sponsorship program coming up where they raise money to supplement their programming budget due to their small budget. He mentioned that this administration has been able to double their donations since this program began. He announced that they should have broken the $100,000 mark which will go to programming on campus which directly goes to students and is raised by private funding. Wells is proud of what they are doing and thanked the Staff Senate for their time.
Staff Senate Shirts
President Galy announced that the Executive Committee has approved the purchase of Staff Senate t-shirts for all Senators for Fall Fest. Galy circulated a sign-up sheet needed for everyone’s size. The Staff Senate will also offer some other options beside the free t-shirt available for purchase which are the polo shirts, cardigans, button down shirts, dri-fit shirts, or vests. Melonie will gather orders and place with Dream Silk Screens. She will also circulate a link to view the products on line before ordering.
Benefit of the Month
President Galy mentioned that she spoke with Senator Torres regarding the Benefit of the Month. Torres wanted to remind everyone of the $20 blood test being offered by the Student Health Center for faculty and staff to check their levels.
NEW BUSINESS
Staff Senate Brochure
President Galy announced that the Executive Committee has reviewed the updates made to the Staff Senate Brochure which was included in the meeting packet. Please review and if you see any changes or corrections, please forward those to Melonie Holden who will update.
Committee/Liaison Assignments
President Galy announced that the Committee/Liaison Assignment Roster was also included in the meeting packet. Executive Committee has reviewed all Senators selections and some additional updates to the assignments were made during the meeting. Galy announced that the Executive Committee discussed the Benefits and Policies Committee and noticed the many Senators serving on the Professional Committee were also serving on the Benefits and Policies Committee and decided that the Classified Committee should work jointly with the Professional Committee as Budget and Finance and Governmental Relations did last year as they work on similar initiatives. Galy explained that since Benefits and Policies is a standing committee it would be possible to have Professional and Classified as sub-committees. They will remain as separate committees but can work jointly.
A motion to approve the Professional and Classified Sub-Committees under Benefits and Policies was made by Senator Sirman. The motion, seconded by Senator Magee, carried.
Committee Chair Vacancies
President Galy asked if anyone was willing to serve as the Classified Committee Chair. Senator Collins agreed if she can be taken off of the By-laws Committee. Galy agreed but asked if another classified member will serve on the Classified Committee so we have equal representation on the Professional and Classified Sub-Committees under the Benefits and Policies Joint Committee.
Committee Meeting Schedules
President Galy encouraged Chairs to begin setting their schedules and forward those to Melonie Holden as she attends for additional support. Galy mentioned that she will attend as many meetings as she can as well.
Appeals Ad-Hoc Committee
President Galy asked if there are any volunteers for the Appeals Committee, she mentioned in the President’s Report. Senator Perkins and Frazier volunteered to serve. Galy mentioned that there any not a lot of Appeals to review but some will need to be reviewed from time to time.
FAQ’s for the New Web Site
President Galy encouraged Senators to submit any common frequently asked questions that we should post on the newly designed web site which is set to launch soon.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
General Circulars No. 2011-019 & 020
President Galy announced that the August meeting packet included General Circulars No. 2011-019, and 020 for review by Senators.
Staff Senator Birthdays
President Galy announced that Senator Karen Sirman will celebrate her birthday on August 25 and Senator Michael Guillory will celebrate his birthday on August 29. “Happy Birthday”
MOTION TO ADJOURN – With there being no more business, Senator Carruth moved to adjourn. The motion, seconded by President-Elect Gothreaux, carried. The meeting adjourned before noon.
Blake Winchell, Secretary