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KULSS Exec

Meeting Minutes

Thursday, May 1, 2008
Milton's in the Union, 1:00-2:30am

Present: Jill Becker (Chair), Nishon Hawkins (Vice Chair); Angie Rathmel (Secretary); Denise Swartz (Group 1); Sarah Thomas (Group 2); Julie Warrick (Group 3); Robert Szabo (Group 4)
Absent:

Approval of 4/17/08 meeting’s minutes.
DONE

Approval of previous meeting’s action items

WHO?	BY WHEN?	WHAT?
1. Denise	DONE	Add Anne Hayden to Group 1 email list
2. Sarah	NEW ACTION	Resend feedback from SD speaker
3. Angie	DONE	Send Sarah additional feedback
4. Denise	DONE	Reserve June 12th general meeting
5. Jill	NEW ACTION	Gather staff development documentation
6. Jill	NEW ACTION	Clean up folders on G drive, add things (agendas, etc.)

Group Reports:
Grp 1:  Acq/Ser, Reference, Collection Development, Administration, Facilities

• Denise Swartz, 30 year Employee Recognition

Grp 2: Cataloging

• Employee Regcognitions
  • 35 years – Joy Fry
  • 30 years – Kerry Chapman, Geri Slater, Margaret Wilson
  • 20 years – Carmen Orth-Alfie
  • 15 years – Cindy Rivera
  • 5 years – Erin Kidwell, Rani Subramanian

Grp 3: Access Services, Mail Room, ILL

• Gary Sameulson, 30 years Employee Recognition

Grp 4: Anschutz, Annex, Art, Engineering, Music, RCL, Spencer   

• ANSCHUTZ
• COncrete work being done -- front steps complete.
• ANNEX
• N/A
• ART (submitted by Ann Snow)
• Susan and Ann are sharing Heather's work responsibilities until someone new is hired. The search committee has reviewed the applications, and hope to start interviewing soon.
• Now a reader-printer for microforms in Art instead of the ancient film and fiche readers.

• ENGINEERING
• No report, but see update from Jeff McAdams

Not much to report on here. Yesterday was the last day of regular classes. This semester will be over a week from today, which seems kind of early. Tonight I'm going to a book presentation of a retired engineer who helped build many of this city's structures. He wrote a memoir about his professional life. I know I'm in Texas because the venue is a fancy business meeting spot called The Petroleum Club. On their website is a picture of a wedding reception there. The imagery doesn't seem to jibe.

On another note, I now have three plants in my office which I haven't killed in almost four months!

How's the team? What's new at KU Libraries?

Hasta luego,

Jeff

• MUSIC & DANCE (submitted by Nancy Hawkins)
  • Only news here at this late date is a new exhibit in our cases celebrating the 100th anniversary of dancer/teacher Elizabeth Sherbon--come on down!
    
    
• RCL
• N/A
  
  
• SPENCER (submitted by Mary Ann Baker)
  • Well, a number of us are heading to KC to attend the spring meeting of the Kansas City Area Archivists. The featured speaker is Dr. Milton Katz, professor of American Studies at the Kansas City Art Institute and author of the first biography of African American basketball coach John B. McLendon, Jr. Dr. Katz did a lot of his research in Spencer Library. KCAA will also be honoring one of our own but it's a secret for now so I'll tell you next time (unless of course I forget in which case you can remind me).
  • Most of the staff at KSRL is so booked up that we can't find a time for the Reader Services group to have a meeting. We're also into the time of the semester when class projects are due so we've got a lot of folks in the reading room and a lot of materials being checked in and out.
  • The fire alarm dudes are busy at work. Yesterday they were up on ladders near my cube on the second floor with their drills. It was like being at the dentist only without the laughing gas. Then, when I was working at the reading room desk on the third floor, they drilled right under where I was seated and I almost hit the ceiling.
  • Everyone on the highest library administrative level is also busy so follow-up on the consultant's report has been sparse. The search committee for Barry's position has begun work. Perhaps someone will be in place before Barry leaves in June. The Libraries is advertising for a bibliographer for Humanities (English). A group is convening to talk about how we can establish a process to start digitizing the our collections. Discussions of the two task force reports related to moving the reference desk and weeding the reference collections in Reader Services are also planned.

 

Committee Reports
University Senate (Submitted by Mary Ann)
24 April 2008 -- US President Crowe issued his report in written form before the meeting and included the news that the US and its Executive Committee (SenEx) are working through transitioning to the 2008/2009 governance leadership. Also, they reminded university administration about the SenEx “Statement on Criminal Background Checks for Prospective Employees” (See: http://www2.ku.edu/~unigov/background.shtml) following reports of discussions on matters of security at a recent meeting of the Board of Regents. (see Faculty Senate President report for more on this). Crowe also reported that SenEx has created a Task Force on Employment Benefits to gather information on possible changes.
Faculty Senate (FS) President Levy reported that while news reports made it seem like Board of Regents (BoR) institutions will now have criminal background checks for all employees, in fact all they agreed on was to hire a consultant to look into the matter. The BoR has yet to revisit their 5 strategic questions/goals and the current Council of Faculty Senate Presidents (CoFSP) are working to transition their input on this matter to the new council members. The FS is getting folks to serve on the task force to revise/redo the Faculty and Unclassified Handbook and also selecting new chairpersons for their committees.
The Student Senate has completed hiring their executive staff and making appointments to positions and committees.
The Unclassified Senate announced the results of their elections: Paul Farran is now the president and Jeannette Johnson is the president-elect.
The University Support Staff also announced the results of their elections.
The majority of the meeting was spent on discussion of the proposed amendments to the US Rules and Regulations on the withdrawl policy and the guidelines for dealing with scientific/scholarly misconduct. The amendments to the withdrawal policy passed after brief discussion and some technical changes. The discussion on the scholarly misconduct amendments was more lengthy but it too passed. Information about these proposals can be viewed on the KU Governance website: http://www2.ku.edu/~unigov/.
Dan Bernstein, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), reviewed the work of the Task Force on Learner Outcomes. This seems to be KU's attempt to be able to provide considered input into the federal discussion (No college student left behind) and the BoR's strategic plans on this topic. The task force has been gathering information on what has been published and what other universities have done/are doing. It looks like testing of college students could go one of two ways or a combination of the two:
1) Standardized tests, possibly having students take a test when they are freshmen and then again when they are seniors
2) An assessment of a portfolio of each student's work
KU is already participating in some studies on this topic.
The CTE is hosting speakers on this overall concept at the Teaching Summit August 19th.
If you are interested in learning more about all this, contact Mary Ann for access to the task force documentation of their work.
The US transition meeting (includes both outgoing members and incoming members) is scheduled for May 1st, 3:30pm in 106 Green Hall -- note room change. There will be elections for president-elect and faculty members of SenEx and the Provost will be present to talk about KU's strategic planning initiative.

1 May 2008 -- Mostly the meeting was taken up with a thank-you-fest. US President Crowe thanked Faculty Senate President Levy (a lot -- well deserved), SenEx, committees and their chairpersons, the 4 constituent Senates and all US senators for their work this past year and for the collegial manner in which it was done. Faculty Senate President Levy echoed many of Crowe's thanks. The two presidents were thanked and everyone thanked Kathy and Molly of the Governance Office (most deserved).

Marianne Berry took over as President of US and Nancy Kinnersley took over as President of Faculty Senate. Liz Kowalchuk was elected President-elect of the US. Stacy Elmer was the student elected to be Vice-President of US. Members of the faculty were elected to serve on both SenEx and FacEx.

Our Provost talked briefly about the timeline of the most recent strategic plan, 2015 Initiative (described http://www2.ku.edu/~oirp/planning/index.shtml). Work on formulating this deliberately broad plan of what's important to us now began on January 29, 2008; recommendations were forwarded in early April; a narrative weaving everything together is expected by May 5th and public release of the finished document will be around May 9th.

The Provost also let us know that some of our financial requests from the legislature haven't met with total success. We may be able to revive the pharmacy building proposal. We may only get $25 million instead of $35 million in our block grant -- this may affect salary increases among other things. Looks like our request for $1 million to support a science/technology/math initiative is not going to be forthcoming.

As I write this the KU national champs are meeting with the KS legislature and they brought the football and basketball teams & coaches with them. Yea, it's the Debate Team. This visit and all the press on what KU has done in Greenburg makes this a good week for KU according to the Provost

University Committee on Libraries (UCL)
No report.

Diversity Committee
No report.

IS Development Council (ISDC)
Unconference event scheduled for May 22nd
Online survey to be sent week of May 5th

Planning & Resources Committee (PRC)
Question about charge. See May 15 KULSS-Exec meeting agenda.
Helping HR Director with New Employee Orientation Checklist. Send edits via Nishon.

 

Colored Bag Lunches
Thursday, May 8th, 12-1pm in Kansas Union, Alcove J
Monday, May 12th, 12-1pm in Kansas Union, Alcove J

 

Agenda items for next meeting with the Dean.

 See attached.

 

Action Items for next meeting:

WHO?	BY WHEN?	WHAT?
1. Angie		Email Mike re: May 15th KULSS meeting to discuss Grievance Committee
2. Sarah		Resend feedback from SD speaker to Angie
3. JIll	Friday May 2	kulib-l email re: Colored Bag Lunches
4. Denise		Reserve Colored Bag lunch dates in Union (Alcoves)
5. Jill		invite LFA Rep to May 15th KULSS meeting to discuss PRC and Grievance COmmittee
6. Jill	by end FY	Gather staff development documentation
6. Jill	by end FY	Clean up folders on G drive, add things (agendas, etc.)

PARKING LOT: