STAFF SENATE MEETING MINUTES February 15, 2012

President Kristie Galy presided over the February 15, 2012, Staff Senate meeting held at Peabody Hall, Room 225, on the LSU Campus at 10:30 a.m.   

ATTENDANCE
Senators           

Executive/Administrator/ Manager
P   Torres, Donna  (’12)
Pr  Exner, Patti (’13) 

Service/Maintenance
P   Chaney, Carolyn (’13)
A   Dixon, Evelyn (’13)
Pr   Matkovic, Igor (’14)

  
Professional/Non-Faculty
P   Carruth, Holly (’12)
P   Chiasson, Denise (’12)
P   Fields, Tim (’12)
P   Frazier, James (’12)
P   Livingston, Lynn (’12)
P   Thibodeaux, Seth (’12)
P   Verma, Lisa (’12)
P   Galy, Kristie (’13)
Pr  Guillory, Michael (’13)
P   Landry, Carolyn (’13)
A   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
P   Heil, Mark (’12)
P   Adedeji, Funmilayo (’13)

Technical/Paraprofessional
P   Pierce, Renee (’13)
Pr  Sirman, Karen (’13)
P   Love, Donna (’14)

Clerical/Secretarial
Pr  Brown, Ruby (’12)
P   Cooley, Judith (’13)
A   Magee, Betty (’13)
P   Collins, Judy (’14)

A - Indicates Absent
P - Indicates Present
Pr - Indicates Proxy

Sign-in Guests:
Dr. Carol O’Neil, Human Ecology
Dr. Darrell Henry, Geology
Mimi Ruebsamen, Human Resource Management
Rachel Wanen, The Daily Reveille

CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order by President Galy at 10:30 a.m.

ATTENDANCE
There was a quorum with five proxies noted.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
Senator Pierce led the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Galy introduced guests: Dr. Carol O’Neil, Chair of the Quality Enhancement Team; Dr. Darrell Henry, Director of SACSCOC Reaffirmation and Accreditation and Chair of the SACSCOC Reaffirmation and Accreditation Steering Committee; Mimi Ruebsamen with Human Resource Management; and Rachel Wanen, The Daily Reveille.

GUEST SPEAKER – Mimi Ruebsamen, Executive Director of Human Resource Management

Staff Senate President Galy thanked Mimi Ruebsamen for coming to speak to the Staff Senate regarding the University Council of Women.

“Thank y’all for having me this morning. I’m actually coming with a different hat on today. I am the past Chair of the University Council on Women; the current chair, Maribel Dietz, was unable to make it, so she sends her regrets. For those of you who are not familiar with the University Council on Women, I just kind of want to tell you who we are and what we do. I believe we have about 18 members; it’s all faculty, staff, and students. We address issues that impact women in our LSU Campus Community. We are an Advisory Committee to the Provost, and we look at our policies and practices and make recommendations to the Provost. When we were first appointed by then-Provost Merget, she had given us three charges to work on: One was stop the ten-year clock, and we did a formal survey, evaluation, came up with some guidance for the Provost and a policy. Faculty mentoring; we did a white paper on that, shared it with the Provost. And, also, duel career hires, which is still under discussion. But, that’s one of the situations in which we’re trying to recruit faculty members, professional staff, and how do we help out if they have a spouse or partner coming with them trying to find a job? So, under the new provost, we have three separate charges: One is staff mentoring, the second is childcare availability and affordability, and the third is monitoring the University’s reorganization. I’m here today to talk you a little bit about the childcare availability and affordability. The sub-committee that is working on that – we feel this charge is very important. We hear from faculty, staff, students of how difficult it is to find really good childcare and that’s an affordable rate. And, we’ve got our LSU Childcare on campus, which is fantastic, but we’re hearing that that is not meeting the needs of all of our LSU community as far as the capacity. So, we have heard various things even from students saying they aren’t able to attend class because they have childcare issues – certainly, faculty and staff. It’s something where sometimes class is missed. Staff, we’ve got people calling in because their children are sick. So, we’re looking at what are the needs of the community and how could we possibly address those things? So, since we’re at the beginning stage and looking for information, we wanted to do some focus groups and get a group of approximately eight people in a room and discuss these things. What are you hearing? What personally are you experiencing? What are some of the negative effects that happen when you can’t find childcare to meet your needs? We are going to conduct four focus groups. The four different groups are the Guardians of a Child (ren) Enrolled at the LSU Childcare Center. The second group is Student- Parents, both undergraduate and graduate students – so students who currently have children. Faculty and staff are the third group and, the fourth group is Academic Administrators. The third group is where I need your help. We need participants in this. We need some really good information that we can act on and make some good recommendations to Academic Affairs of issues that are occurring. So, we would really appreciate it if we could get some feedback from anybody who knows of someone who wants to participate, or if you, yourself, want to participate. The Faculty and Staff focus group is going to be March 7 from 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Is there a way I could email all four of the times and we could just distribute it that way? Because maybe you’d know someone that would fall into another group interested in participating, that would be great. And I’ll also send you the contact email address. We have a graduate student that’s working on organizing this for us. She’s taking a list of names, and we’ll get in contact with those individuals.”

Question: “Can you go ahead and give us those dates?”

Answer:  “Sure! The Guardians of Child (ren) enrolled at the LSU Childcare Center will be held on March 1, from 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. The Student-Parent group will be held on March 6, from 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m., Faculty and Staff will be held on March 7, from 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m., and the Academic Administrators will be held on March 9, from 10:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. If you know of any administrators that you think will be really helpful at participating, we’re asking them does this impact recruiting members, does this impact retention, what are you hearing, what are the needs of your employees, what have you heard? So if you want to encourage anybody to participate in these, we’d really appreciate it. Anybody have any other questions about that?”

Question: “Are y’all looking at all aspects? Care is one. Facilities are a big issue. When we built that one, it was a three million dollar endeavor. And to amateurize that for debt service is really huge. Those are all terms of issues because, I’ll go back in time, we looked at places off campus, and the indication was stop, do it, make it happen.”

Answer:  “Right, just as the University Council of Women has discussed this, we talked about the various things someone might actually look for when they’re looking for childcare. Would they rather have childcare next to their house, or do they like to have it next to their work? Would they rather have one that has four stars and is an A rating, or are they okay with not having a star system? Whatever it is, we’re trying to get a feel – is it just a matter of better communicating the available daycare since the childcare, at this time, is not able to meet everyone’s needs? And maybe long term, we’d look at. But for right now, is there a way we can at least share some information, get better resources? But rather than speculating what we need to do, we wanted to start off with what are really the needs before we jump into that?”

Questions: “Do you maybe see this as a teaching center as well? Are you going to have internships from different disciplines to staff, or do you have to only staff it with professionals?”

Answer:  “As far as expanding the Childcare Center, I don’t know that we’ve gotten that far. We’re more thinking what the needs are first, before we jump into that. But, working from Human Resources, I have heard various administrators say that it’s hard to recruit and share this information – y’all have to be careful not to ask questions about the children, legal implications. It’s also kind of feeling it out, and make sure information is provided to these candidates, it’s not just forgotten because we don’t want to go there at all. There’s a way to kind of navigate that.”

Question: “It may be a good idea to reach out to Residential Life also, since they do own the property, married student housing especially. I’d reach out to Steve Waller.”

Answer:  “Thank you, that’d be very helpful. Something else I wanted to let y’all know about. We’re also going to do a climate survey soon, and believe me, our group – we talked amongst ourselves but then afterwards we’d get with all the different areas and tried to get some input on this. So, we’re going to try to do a climate survey that, hopefully, will occur this semester. So, be looking for that soon, and again, we would really appreciate your participation. All the information going into this is to make a better LSU. So, we take this very seriously. We’re a very active group. We look at it, we research it, we look at our peers, and we give them a white paper of suggestions. Thank you.”

Mimi Ruebsamen thanked the Staff Senate for the invitation to speak today.

GUEST SPEAKER – Dr. Darrell Henry, Director of SACSCOC Reaffirmation and Accreditation and Chair of the SACSCOC Reaffirmation and Accreditation Steering Committee and Dr. Carol O’Neil, Chair of the Quality Enhancement Plan Team

Staff Senate President Galy thanked Dr. Henry and Dr. O’Neil for coming to speak to the Staff Senate regarding SACSCOC Reaffirmation and Accreditation.

“We requested to come over because this is more or less an informational presentation that Dr. Carol O’Neil and I are going to give. And, it relates to this long string of letters, first of all. There are a couple of handouts coming around which includes the presentation that we’re giving. First of all, what are all those letters? What do those mean? SACSCOC, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, that’s our regional accrediting group for LSU. What this is – there are six regional accrediting groups across the United States and a few international ones, and these are self-regulators. In other words, this is not being driven by the federal government; it’s something that all of the membered schools that are associated with SACS are dealing with. This is a self-regulating body; in other words, LSU along with the other 804 institutions in the region, are part of it. And the region we’re in covers the south and southeast. There are 11 states, 804 institutions; we’re a member of this group. With that membership comes some duties. One of the things we have to do is develop amend and approve accreditation requirements, and these can be fairly extensive. All universities, all colleges, all schools that are accredited are on a ten-year cycle. And that ten-year cycle for LSU is coming up in 2014; we were last accredited in 2004. So, we have to get ready for that, and this is not an insignificant thing. Alright, so what is this? What do we do? What’s involved in reaffirmation? There are basically two parts to it: the first part, I’ll be dealing with, the second part, Carol will be dealing with. The first part is the certification or the compliance certification document. Inherently, that’s a backward-looking document. It’s basically what we are, what we will be in the next two years, looking backwards. How well did we comply with roughly 98 principles of accreditation? That sounds like a lot, and it is because there’s a lot involved. The other part of it is the Quality Enhancement Plan. Carol will be talking about this, and this is a forward-looking document, and it basically involves some broad-based learning outcomes that reach across the University community.  For the compliance document, there are four different parts to it. The first part is actually fairly trivial in the sense that there’s not a lot of preparation. This is basically principles of integrity; in other words whatever document we produce, we want to make sure it’s the most accurate and correct as we can. It should be a no brainer, but sometimes it’s not. The second part of this document covers core requirements; these are a number or principles that are broad-based and cover the entire University community. These include policies and procedures that are associated with the University; they are published and implemented by the institution. The third one represents comprehensive standards; these are a fairly involved group of issues that deal with the overall institutional mission, governance and effectiveness, institutional effectiveness, and these actually can be kind of hard. These are where a lot of red flags come up, I’ll show you some of the red flags that come up every once in a while. These include resources, programs, and making sure that our institution – LSU – complies with the policies of the Commission of Colleges. And the final part of this document is one that requires us to pay attention to the federal requirements. There are some federal requirements that all accredited schools throughout the United States have to pay attention to. So, SACSCOC is going to take a look at how we did at paying attention to the federal requirements. Again, these things have to be in writing, the ones that are related to the federal requirements, they need to be published and implemented. Now, I’ve got here a breakdown of the sorts of things that are associated with this document. Basically, I’ve broken these 98 principles into some subcategories that the University has to deal with. And these are in alphabetical order going from Academic Affairs through Student Life. But there are a few that we have to watch out for: the ones with the asterisks here, these are the ones that traditionally Universities have had problems with. And we know these are equivalent of an IRS flag that we have to watch out for. Credentials cover not only the academic part; in other words who’s the instructor on record, who’s instructing somebody, if you have an instructor in a certain discipline, does that person have a terminal degree in that discipline? That’s one part. But, it also covers other areas of the University. It covers things that are associated with the support groups and some of the things that make the University run. So, the person that’s in charge of the given group, do they have the appropriate credentials? This is one of the things that is most commonly problematic, in part because it’s such a large issue that you have to deal with, and Mimi, who was just here, is sort of spearheading one of those. General Education, that’s more on the academics side. We have to make sure we’re doing that correctly; that’s not necessary an easy thing. Distance Ed is another one, whether we do that correctly or not, that’s something we have to pay attention to, and the federal government is particularly interested in this now. They’ve added a couple of principles that deal directly with Distance Ed. The one that probably will involve more of you are the Institutional Effectiveness issues, and that is basically not only learning outcomes in the academic part work, but the support groups, the support organization – how well does that work, do we have a way of evaluating our work, and then do we put these evaluations in play to improve the entire system? I’ve got three principles here just as an example of things some of you may be involved with. A couple of examples: 2.10, which is one of the principles; this is one that has to do with student support. It reads: ‘The institution provides student support programs, services, and activities consistent with its mission that promote student learning and enhance the development of its students.’ One of the things, if you go through this document, you’ll find that it’s really interested in student learning; that’s the bottom line. The Institutional Effectiveness, again this is one of the red flags that we have to pay attention to. It reads: ‘The institution identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of improvement based on analysis of the results in each of the following areas: academic and student support services.’ So, basically, it’s a gathering of evidence, discussing it, providing feedback, and then improving the program; that’s the whole cycle. The cycle that SACS wants to see is improvement. The final one I have up there for you to see is dealing with Qualified Staff: the institution provides a sufficient number of qualified staff – with appropriate education or experiences in library and/or other learning/information resources – to accomplish the mission of the institution. So, remember there are 98 of these that we have to pay attention to. Alright, what’s our timeline here? Well, here’s where we want to be. December of 2014, we want to be to the point where we get reaffirmation of accreditation. That’s our bottom line. How do we get there? Well, fall of 2011, both Carol and I came on board as directors and chairs of these efforts. This semester, we have a lot of things we have to do. One of which is we have to go through all of these principles – we’re doing great now – and audit where we are in these principles, and that includes a number of people, including Mimi who’s dealing with that. Where there are problems, we have a little time to change them or correct the problems, but this is not necessarily all going to happen that quickly. So, if there’s something that has to go through the Board of Regions, for instance, that’s a slow process. So, we have to be careful to tend to the problem areas as quickly as possible. Toward the end of the summer – and actually it’ll be the end of this semester – we want to start pulling together as many documents as possible. November 2013 seems like a long way off. As of tomorrow, its 572 days, but when we have a clock counting down, we need to have this compliance document in hand, and send it to SACS. We’ll have the review the following six weeks or so, and they will send us the results of their review. And then, in roughly December, we will have a chance to respond to that off-site review that SACS has. At the same time, the second part, this parallel part, the QEP, will be submitted, and Carol will explain what’s going on there. We have, in 2014 then, a scheduled on-site visit from a number of representatives from SACSCOC. They'll be on campus; they’re going to ask us where we were a little weak in certain areas to see if we have any issues. And in the fall of that year, we have a chance to respond to any issues that follow shortly. And hopefully we get to this part, the reaffirmation, with no findings, is exactly where we want to be. So, okay, this is our timeline. This is the final slide I’ve got, and this is what we’re doing now. We have a Steering Committee, and this Steering Committee is composed of a number of people across the University, composed of faculty, staff, as well as some students; representatives of a broad spectrum of the University. We chose those individuals to represent some of those sub-categories that I showed you earlier so we could have people who have some background in these areas that are going to be able to reasonably answer some of these principles. This group has a very large charge, but is basically gathering information, writing this material up, and making sure it’s verified, and if there are issues, going back and fixing them. So, this is not a small task. Where they are exactly right now is tomorrow, we actually have our next meeting, and we’re going to do an initial audit of where we think we are. Roughly, half of the people have materials in right now, but we still have a long ways to go. We’re just finding out how far ahead or behind we are, but this is roughly where we should be at this time in the accreditation process. So, we’re, at least for now, right on track. With that, I’ll give you Dr. Carol O’Neil who will talk about QEP.”

“I’m going to talk to you about the Quality Enhancement Plan, which is something that Darrell had mentioned a couple of times. I am a professor in Human Ecology. I am also the chair of the Quality Enhancement Plan Team. The QEP is actually mentioned twice in the SACS document, once as one of the core requirements, and once as part of the institutional effectiveness. And in both cases, they basically say the same thing – that we have to identify a problem that will improve our student learning, we have to implement a solution to the problem, and pilot-test the solution, and then assess the solution. The QEP identifies, and I’ll explain more about how we’re going to identify it, the problem we choose to work on will go for three to four years, and a fifth year report will be written. At that time, the QEP that we choose is likely to be institutionalized or abandoned as ineffective. The three elements of the Quality Enhancement Plan from the last five-year cycle were Communication across the Curriculum, Residential Colleges, and the Summer Reading Program. Okay, CxC and the Residential Colleges have been institutionalized here at LSU. If you take a look at the organization, up at the top we have the chancellor, Gil Reeve is responsible – he’s the liaison for the SACS reaffirmation – and if you look down this side, you see that you’ve got Darrell and his reaffirmation steering committee, his working groups, but if you look at the other side, you see that you have the chair of the QEP team, the committee that’s working on this, and we also have working groups on this. We have a team of 23 administrators, faculty, staff, and we have an undergraduate student and a graduate student. We have been charged to provide the leadership, identification, and preparation of the QEP, conduct necessary surveys and literature reviews to prepare for the QEP, help draft and review it, seek input and feedback from University-wide stake holders, such as yourself, and ensure that the QEP is completed on time, and ensure the integrity of the process. Now, for this, integrity has a slightly different meaning from what Darrell said. Apparently, one school went online, googled the QEP program from another school, substituted their name, and submitted it to SACS. Didn’t work, and so we were concerned about that. I went to a workshop in Orlando in December, and this process was compared to doing another dissertation. In reality, it’s like doing a dissertation with a grant attached. We are working in parallel and have a slightly different timeline than Darrell does. The QEP will be submitted 6 weeks before the on-site review; the target date for completion of the document is 12/15/13, and that sounds like it’s a long time away, but if you’re writing a grant and a dissertation, it’s close.  The on-site site visitors, or the SACS reaffirmation, will address the overall reaffirmation at the time. Within the time frame, we have to identify the project, compile the project, and we have to be ready to implement the project; and that’s from a standpoint of the project, the resources, including the people who will do it. We are going to be surveying students, faculty, and staff; this will be an online survey, so we ask you and all that you know, being faculty, students or staff, to fill these out. We’re analyzing existing data at LSU, we’re studying best practices, and we’re soliciting proposals from LSU faculty. This is a timeline for the solicitation of proposals, and I put it up here not so much that I think the staff is all going to be running out to give assorted QEP proposals, but so you can work with faculty, make suggestions to faculty, in any way help faculty who are going to be doing this. On Friday, we’re going to send out a broadcast email that’s going to request a two to three page concept paper. March 23rd is the deadline to return the concept papers. On April 2nd those that we feel are suitable for LSU, we will invite those faculty members or faculty teams to submit a full report and the choice will be made the week of May 1st.”

Question: “The administrative and LSU faculty, is there any chance that professional staff can also send out proposals to you all, or are you just looking for faculty?”

Answer:  “I don’t see any reason why professional staff cannot do that, but one thing is that it has to be geared towards student learning.”

Question: “Well, like a proposal that would address when a kid who is an incoming freshman can declare a major and then its impact on retention and CATS, I guess could be something that could be studied as well.”

Answer:  “Okay, go for it. And we will work over the summer with the faculty who puts this in to develop the literature, talk about assessment, best practices; things like that. We’re also going to have some samples of QEPs at other institutions. And no matter how nice someone else’s QEP is, it doesn’t mean it’s right for us. So what we have to do for these proposals is match the proposal we get against the needs we have at LSU. I saw some very nice ones for Developmental Math programs at this meeting, but that’s not for us. And I am telling you all this, so I can get input, I just discovered I may be getting another proposal here, and to elicit your help, not only in the proposals but also in the surveys we will be doing. And you do. Encourage interested faculty to submit a concept paper. Encourage all faculty, staff, and students to submit surveys; and these will be online. And if anyone has any questions at all, they can certainly contact me – coneil1@lsu.edu. Are there any questions for either Darrell or me? Thank you very much. Thank you for having us.”

Dr. Henry and Dr. O’Neil thanked the Staff Senate for the invitation to speak today.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES – January 18, 2012, Staff Senate Meeting  

Page 6, Paragraph 1, line 7 reads: health by combing should read: health by combining
Page 7, Paragraph 1, line 18 reads: In fact, kinesiology should read: In fact, Kinesiology
Page 7, Paragraph 1, line 45 reads: our Deans circle should read: our Dean’s circle
Page 10, Paragraph 1, line 4 reads: And, we’re luck should read: And, we’re lucky
A motion to accept the minutes as amended was made by Past-President Verma. The motion, seconded by Senator Collins, carried.

PRESIDENT’S REPORT
President Galy reported that on January 24, she attended the first Quality Enhancement Plan meeting of the New Year.  They are working on surveys for faculty and students to get an idea of the need on campus.

Galy reported that on January 25, she attended the Provost Search Committee Meeting to review candidate files.

Galy reported that on January 31, she attended the Quality Enhancement Plan Student Survey Subcommittee. They discussed the draft of the student survey to present to the full QEP on February 9, 2012.  Galy has actually leaned upon Senator Livingston to be the Staff Senate Representative on the QEP.  She will give updates on this process from here on out.

Galy reported that on February 3, she and Past-President Verma attended the Board of Supervisors meeting.  The mid-year budget cut was approved.

Galy reported that on February 14, the University Council of Women met but she was unable to attend due to a conflict of being out of town at a conference.

STANDING COMMITTEES
Budget & Finance/Governmental Relations
President-Elect Gothreaux announced that the Budget & Finance/Governmental Relations Joint Committee met on February 14, 2012. The committee discussed the recent activity regarding the proposed changes in the state retirement systems. The committee recommended that the Executive Committee invite A.G. Monaco with Human Resource Management to present at the next Staff Senate Meeting to brief Senators on the proposed changes and the potential impact on staff.

President-Elect Gothreaux encouraged Senators to attend the Faculty Senate Co-Sponsored Workshop with representatives from the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana retirement plan which is scheduled this afternoon. The committee also discussed a recent workshop held on campus that addressed workplace civility. It was recommended that the Professional and Classified committees explore the details of this recent workshop and the potential benefits of making it available to the broader staff population. There was also a brief discussion on the release of the Governor’s executive budget with respect to his proposed funding of higher education.

Classified
Senator Collins announced that the committee discussed the proposal from the Bylaws Committee to join the Classified and Professional Committee into the Staff Benefits and Policies Committee. The Classified Committee members were not in support of joining these two committees.

Long Range Review & Planning
President-Elect Gothreaux announced that the Long Range Review & Planning was scheduled on February 2, 2012, but unfortunately due to non-attendance, the meeting was cancelled.

AD-HOC COMMITTEES
Bylaws
President-Elect Gothreaux reported that the Bylaws Committee met on January 19, 2012. The Committee did reach out to the Classified Committee for some input on the proposed change in the Bylaws on the Standing Committee structure. After some discussion at the last Staff Senate Meeting, there was some concern expressed by the Classified Committee. The proposal is essentially to collapse three committees into one with representation from both classified and professional staff. The Bylaws Committee will continue some dialogue with the Classified Committee to work out some of their concerns.

President Galy suggested that the Classified Committee be invited to attend the next Bylaws Committee Meeting to address any issues that some of the members may have. Galy mentioned that collectively we can do more without three committees possibly meeting on the same issues. President-Elect Gothreaux will poll the group for the best time for all to attend.   

LIAISON COMMITTEES
Campus Communicators
President Galy announced that Senator Sirman submitted a liaison report from the Campus Communicators meeting on February 9, 2012, which was included in the meeting packet for review.

Council of Staff Advisors
Past-President Verma reported that the Council of Staff Advisors to the Board of Supervisors met on February 3, 2012. The primary topic of discussion was the proposed changes to the state retirement system. One of the members gave a recap of the bills being proposed and the impact those changes could have on staff. Past-President Verma encouraged all staff to attend any of the scheduled workshops to understand these proposed changes.

Office of Group Benefits
President Galy announced that Sheantel Baker with Accounting Services submitted a liaison report from the Office of Group Benefits meeting on January 29, 2012, which was included in the meeting packet for review.

OLD BUSINESS
Benefit of the Month
Senator Torres announced that the Benefit of the Month is vision benefits with your health insurance. Before you go for an eye exam, review your health plan for eye benefits that are in addition to the separate vision benefit through Davis Vision Plan. Senator Torres encouraged Senators to announce this to their departments. Senator Adedeji asked if safety glasses are still covered by LSU. Senator Torres will find out and let the Staff Senate Office know to pass that information on.   

NEW BUSINESS
UREC Tiger Den
President Galy announced the University Recreation Tiger Den Summer Camp Registration is open through February 26, 2012, for priority registration for returning families, LSU faculty and staff, and LSU students who would like to enroll their children in their program before registration opens to the public.

Staff Senate Election Timeline
President Galy announced that the Staff Senate Election Timeline was included in the meeting packet. Galy mentioned some of the terms that are expiring. She encouraged everyone to review and post in their departments for participation.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Faculty Senate Forum
President Galy announced that the Faculty Senate is co-sponsoring a workshop with LSUnited and officials with Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana retirement plan in an effort to continue and promote dialogue concerning the retirement plans available to LSU employees. The workshop will be held today, February 15, 2012, from 4:00 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. in the International Room at the Union. All members of the LSU Community are welcome to attend.  

TechPawLooza 2012
President Galy announced that LSU Information Technology Services is promoting their spring technology day, TechPawLooza 2012 which will be held on March 14, 2012, from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. in the Royal Cotillion Ballroom in the Union. A flier to support this event will be circulated to all Senators to post in their departments to encourage participation.

Staff Senator Birthdays
President Galy announced that Senator Igor Matkovic celebrated his birthday on February 12 and Senator Patti Exner will celebrate her birthday on February 25. “Happy Birthday”

MOTION TO ADJOURN – With there being no more business, Senator Carruth moved to adjourn.  The motion, seconded by Senator Collins, carried.  The meeting adjourned before noon.

Blake Winchell, Secretary

BW/mh