MARSHALL UNIVERSITY CLASSIFIED STAFF COUNCIL MINUTES
THURSDAY, May 15, 2003
MUGC/So. Charleston 

MEMBERS PRESENT: President Barrett, Fran Browning, Bernice Bullock, Muhammad Chaudhry, Judith Damron, Woodrow Edmonds, Charlene Hawkins, Stephanie Neal, Sherri Noble, Martha Pierson, Linda Rhodes, Patsy Stephenson, Gary Stone, Leah Tolliver, Cora Westmoreland, Joe Wortham 

EXECUSED ABSENCES: Barbara Black, Jack Blake, Jill Burcham, Betty Cook, Elizabeth Graybeal, Charles Harless, Leonard Lovely, Sonja McKenna, Nancy Pelphrey, James Sinnette, LuAnn South. 

UNEXEUSED ABSENCES:  David Cremeans 

GUESTS:  Jim Stephens, Director of Human Resources, Mike Dunn 

GUEST SPEAKER: Gary White, Chair of the Board of Governors 

The meeting was brought to order at 1:10 p.m. 

President Barrett asked for a motion to accept the minutes. Motion was made by Mr. Stone and seconded by Ms. Hawkins.  Motion carried. Minutes approved. 

GRADUATE SCHOOL: Ms. Pierson expressed their concern over the implementation of the Graduate School’s Staff Council separate and apart from the main campus. She has some people who said that they would work with her on getting things in place. She still feels reluctant to have a staff council because there are no administrative offices there to go to for information. They will still have to come to the Huntington campus for things that they need.  They feel that they will have no voice of any kind there and they don’t understand the whole process as to why this (having their own Council) is being done.  Ms. Neal said that she cannot speak for the legislature, but feels what may have occurred is that when they were putting together the language for staff council they took the language from the Advisory Council that listed the varies institutions and the Graduate College does still have an Advisory Council representative.  She thinks that is probably how this occurred. Stephanie went on to say that if it is determined and voted on by the (graduate) staff that they don’t want a staff council, perhaps in the next legislative session we can take this to them and ask them to put it in Code. She cautioned them that they might be jeopardizing their Advisory Council position if they do this. Ms. Pierson reiterated that she can understand the need for a separate Advisory Council person, but she does not understand why they need a separate council. She spoke to President Barrett about the need to have a liaison person there who will come to the Huntington campus every month to attend the staff council meetings so that they still can maintain that connection. Discussion was lengthy. 

INSTITUTIONAL BOARD OF GOVERNORS: Ms. Noble reported that they approved the previous minutes, they had announcements, and they distributed a calendar of events.  The Rally for America is scheduled to be held at the football stadium on May 24.  That rally is to honor the troops, fireman and policemen. They approved program review results for the submission to HEPC.  The Board of Governors is now responsible for reviewing all academic programs as well as approving, recommending continuations or deletions and the ability to ask for more information.  We gave approval to send those to the Higher Education Policy Commission. We approved an agreement between MU and the WV Technology Assistance Corporation with revisions regarding conflict of interest.  She continued to discuss this issue.  She continued with the action items which they approved the revised proposal for tuition and fees for 2003-04. Marshall will get 9.25% and the Community College will get 4.25%. Student Activity fees were approved as presented originally and we are reducing the actual student activity fees by $5 and this $5 is going to go into the operations fee to help the institution with the budget reduction problem. We approved a new MS degree in Dietetics and a new academic program with an area of emphasis on teaching of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. It is to be implemented this fall. We also approved a resolution that the administration  undertake a systematic all inclusive review of the institution in an effort to locate and identify areas of activity and operations which may be consolidated, modified, reduced or eliminated.  We approved a resolution honoring Peter Berner-VP of Dow Chemical Company’s. WV Operations worked with MU to enhance partnership with Dow’s South Charleston Technical Center.  The Community College received accreditation for the maximum of 5 years. She mentioned that Chairman White made committee assignments and she had asked for, and was assigned to finance.  She is glad to be on finance because that is the area she knows most about.  She continued to discuss the information items in detail. After we got the tuition increase straighten out and we got peer equity money and some restoration of some funds our total reduction came down to $3,320,000 so it is better than it was but it is still bad.  They funneled back  $1,128,156 back into Academic Affairs to meet the schedules that we have for the fall. Spring and summer will be a problem next year. Discussion was lengthy. 

Ms. Noble reminded Mr. Layton Cottrill that we (council) had submitted our lay off policy and we have not gotten any feedback about it. He informed her that it was too lengthy. What he said is that he wants simplicity. She asked Ms. King that she share her concerns with the whole Board that Staff Council was concerned with these policies because they didn’t address procedure. They don’t have any detail in them and that we (council) were very concerned about that. There is no impact to this because we don’t anticipate any furloughs or lay off right now but they want to be ready for the future. Ms. Noble voiced her concern to the committee and she said that we were concerned with the lack of detail and procedure and the fact that as written, they could do just about anything. She continued to discuss. In a side conversation Mr. Cottrill told Ms. Noble that we should just submit two or three paragraphs on our main concerns such as: what is not in there that we would like to see in it. Through another conversation it was suggested that we should submit suggested revisions to their policy rather than submit a whole new policy. She continued to discuss. Ms. Pierson said that we should submit something because if we do not, they will do as they please. Another suggestion was that it would be prudent that we re-form that ad hoc committee to look into this issue to come up with a letter to administration about our concerns and state that we are working on revision of their policy. It was asked of Mr. Stephens if he has a sense of what it is that the Administration would want. Mr. Stephens said maybe a better sense of what they don’t want. He feels that we did make some good points but he thinks that they need to be more compact. He personally believes that the longer a policy is the less inclined people are to comply with it. People are more likely to comply with a shorter policy because they can understand them better. He recommended that we look at what we have and go from there. Discussion was lengthy. President Barrett entertained a motion that we re-form the lay off committee (ad hoc) to revisit the lay off policy. Ms. Bullock made a motion that the ad hoc committee with the intent to address the administration concerning the policy that we prepared or to revisit the original policy to see what language can be inserted. There was some discussion. Motion was seconded by Mr. Chaudhry. Motion carried. Approved. 

ACCE: Ms. Neal reported that the Advisory Council met on May 8 at the Graduate College. A lot of their meeting concerned the election results for the staff council president and the elections for the Advisory Council and Institutional Board of Governors representatives. While there was some problems experienced on the campuses in meeting the deadlines of the April the elections, everyone agreed that it is important to remember that staff councils are now officially in State Code.  While there’s some problems that need to be worked out we can deal with those when we revise our constitution and by laws. Our governmental liaison committee is working on a September meeting date with the Governor to talk about our legislative issues for the next session. The committee’s composition will likely change because we will have our elections in July and it consist of executive committee and the chairs of the benefits and the legislative affairs committee. Amy Pitzer has served as chair the past two years and is not eligible to run again, so we will have a new chair for the next year. We talked in great length about the WVU voluntary severance plan for classified employees and also severance plan that was developed for classified employees at West Virginia Net. Both of those plans were approved by their respected staff councils. They were approved by the Policy Commission and by LOCEA. We talked about House Bill 2224 language regarding the requirement for the Governing Boards to establish with the advice and assistance of staff council the role of part-time classified employees by July 1, 2003. Thus far no governing boards have done this and they are concerned that they are not complying with code. We scheduled our retreat for July 30-31, 2003 and it will again be held at Heritage Farm.  Our second annual videoconference will be held Friday, August 1. Marshall is again going to be the host site for that video conference. The time is still to be determined but most likely it will be one or two o’clock in the afternoon. We’ve had discussions with Tom Susman who is now the Director of Administration in addition to Director of PEIA, and with David Fusco in the Governor’s office concerning the allocations of the funds for the removal of the annual increment cap. They have indicated that is still in line and they will take care of that during the June Legislative Interims or special session prior to July 1  which will be held June 8th - 10^th in Charleston. They will not be able to deal with the issue on seniority language at this point but what they will do is make the additional allocation so that becomes a moot issue for the 2003-2004 fiscal year. There was some discussion. Ms. Neal said that the Policy Commission met on April 23-24 and as we discussed they approved tuition and fee increases for the various institutions (this is a copy of the commission communiqué, which is a brief synopsis of what occurred at that meeting) of particular interest to classified employees are handouts which are attached concerning the travel policy and cash advances. Diner Club is no longer the preferred vendor and the institution has changed to Master Card, which is administered through United Bank, and so there were some necessary changes concerning cash advances.  

STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS: 

ELECTIONS    We had our election for classified staff council members.  These elections were held under the new state law is by EEO groups.  Mr. Wortham mentioned that we did have a tie on one of the professional group elections for the last seat so they had to have a run off election that was conducted Tuesday, May 13.  Angela Casey-Bradshaw in the Vice President Finance Office won the last position.  The new council will be comprised of 25 members, five from each of the EEO groups.  

SERVICE: Ms. Bullock reported that her committee sent one get well flower bouquet, two get well cards, two sympathy flower baskets and seven sympathy cards.  They have made no memorial contributions. She has distributed key cards as requested. They collected money for the flower fund at the annual Staff Service Awards Luncheon and hopefully they will have enough money to carry them through next year. 

OLD BUSINESS: Mr. Stephens reported to council on a question that Ms. Burcham raised at our last meeting about a corporate YMCA membership. Mr. Stephens reported that there are two separate issues: 1) the University has a maximum number of payroll deductions that we operate with and all of our deductions slots are taken right now, 2) the other issue is that if we get a space in our stack of deductions the State Auditor would have to set that up as a authorized payroll deduction. Mr. Stephens is of the belief that he (auditor) is not interested in setting up payroll deductions that would funnel money to community organizations. He suggested that we might want to speak to the auditor’s office about this and make a proposal that they authorize payroll deductions for purposes of the YMCA corporate discount, but as we speak right now there is no open slots for payroll deductions. The discount is only available through payroll deduction. To operate this kind of program you have to have a payroll deduction.  

President Barrett mentioned that some of our council members are having problems getting release time from their supervisors to attend our meetings.  She asked Mr. Stephens now that Staff Council is in Code should that not give us a special status which would allow us to be released to attend our staff council meetings? Mr. Stephens said that the best thing to do is to be proactive. He feels that we should develop a policy that says that attendance at Staff Council is important and we should support it. This policy will need to be presented to the Cabinet and disseminated out to the Vice Presidents.  Discussion continued. 

GUEST SPEAKER 

President Barrett said that she is pleased to introduce Mr. Gary White who is the Chair of the Board of Governors. 

Mr. White said that he is pleased to be here at our meeting. He discussed in detail the operations of the Board of Governors. He mentioned the members of the board as well as their credentials.  He indicated that the Board of Governors is a creation of the legislature that took effect July 1, 2001 and transition from the Institutions having a Board of Advisors to a Board of Governors.  Statute provides that a chair can only serve two consecutive terms and having been elected in the first term and second term his tenure as the chair of the board expires June 30. At the May 14 Board meeting he appointed the nominating committee to provide a slate of officers to be elected for the next board meeting, which will be held in early July, and at that point he will preside over the elections of new officers and he will step down and the new chairman will take the seat. It’s been a challenging two years because they have made a major transition. They have gone from a central form of governance at the state level to a local form of governance.  The Policy Commission was put in place by the legislature to simply oversee the activities in a very broad sense of the various institutions of higher learning in WV.  They make sure that we do not cross jurisdictional boundaries and that they do not have an over duplication of course offerings; this is our responsibility.  One of the first official acts by the Board of Governors was to take certain of the policies and procedures and the judiciary responsibility that they were previously vested with, in the case of Marshall University, the Board of Trustee and bring those under the umbrella of the responsibility of the Board of Governors.  

At the May 14 meeting they determined early on to only have two subcommittees, one was Academic Affairs and the other Finance. He mentioned that he appointed five subcommittees in March each having three members. He said that when you look at the function of the University those five committees covers the major areas of functions of the University. They are pretty well organized now and feel that they are very comfortable as a board with each other and they are also getting pretty comfortable with their responsibility. And again, he feels that it is very positive for Marshall University because you have people sitting around the table making decisions for this institution who care about this institution.  

He said that the obvious concern for everyone who is employed, enrolled or otherwise associated with Marshall University is the budgetary situation. In order of magnitude, all things being equal, Marshall is in better shape than a lot of the other institutions. However, because of the financial conditions that we find ourselves in nationally, and with the effect that it has had on all of us and on business in general, we find these problem more magnified in WV than some of the other states. We are faced with major financial challenges in this state. Those financial challenges in the past have been avoided for the most part by education.  Now education is being brought into consideration where additional dollars can be found to be saved out of the state’s budget. We will continue to have problems with our economy until we get back to producing something or making something with our hands and selling that for a profit.  Unless something happens in the economy at the national level, and more particularly at the State level, it would be foolish to believe that we got by this storm and will worry about the next one when it comes. In fact, what the Board has directed President Angel and his staff to do is to take the approach that Marshall University take a look at positions and make close evaluations whether positions need to be filled. To look at expenditures university-wide and how it contributes to the bottom-line of the budget of this university.  Discussion was lengthy…. The Board of Governors takes its responsibilities very seriously as it relates to these budgetary issues. He encourages council to convey this message to the folks we work with each day. This is not a one-year situation. This year it appears that we will be able to avoid any furloughs or any permanent reductions in positions and we hope that this is the case next year and beyond. He is not going to promise that this is the case because he is not optimistic that our budgetary situation particularly as it relates to funds available to us through the legislative process from the state’s budget is going to be going down gradually further and further. They did have an issue relating to the policies of layoffs and furloughs and he feels that this is a good example of the proposed policies presented. There was a good deal of discussion by the board and there was agreement that they would go back and further discuss the issues that council has suggested to be considered. There were some questions and concerns about the budgetary issues.  

SERVICE AWARDS:  The Service Awards Luncheon was held on May 5. Awards were given to 28, 15 years of service, 17, 20 years of service, 17, 25 years of service, 9, 30 years of service, 2, 35 years of service and 26 retirees. Comments we received so far was the meal was well received by the majority of staff of course we welcome any comments any of you should obtain from constitutes. The President has advised us that this is one of the areas that we will have to take a closer look at the cost next year. We did make a change on the 15-year award this year and have heard nothing but praise for it. He explained last year’s 15-year award (plaque with picture frame with small print) and this year’s 15-year award was the plaque without the picture frame and larger print. 

With there being no further business, meeting was adjourned at 3:10 p.m.