EVPECC Council Minutes for June 15th, 2006

 

Attendees:

 

Caroline Beeman, Financial Analysis

Missy Brads, Budget

Alan Cohn, HR

Janice Coles, UVA Police

Gina Corell, OSP

Nykki Critzer, Housing

Gale Ferguson, Pres. Office

Lynn Galasso, Accounting Services

Harland Harris, Major Events

Richard Maupin, Facilities Management

Diddy Morris, UARCH

Melanie Prince, Business Operations

Mary Russell, Printing & Copying

Jeanie Sampson-Giles, Student Financial Services

Laura Sprung, ITC

Betsy Thompson, Parking & Transportation

 

Program:

Council Business

 

The meeting opened with introductions from the council members. It was noted that Kathleen Jump is on vacation, but will gladly receive questions or concerns and respond when she returns.

 

1.               Old Business;

·       The changes to both the Bylaws and representative structure are still being reviewed for final approval.

 

Updates

 

            Alan Cohn, Human Resources ex officio:

·       On June 14th, Service Awards for people with 25 or more years were held at the Omni Hotel. There were approximately 333 people in attendance.

·       This Friday, Inside UVA will cover information about Charter and the changes employees can expect on July 1st, 2006.

·       HR website changed as of June 5th, 2006. It is easier to navigate and was part of HR restructuring.

·       The Chief Human Resource Officer, Nat Scurry, met with a research firm and is in the process of realigning HR employees according to their skills and talents.  Missy asked if HR was going to send out an email to let people know about the changes. Some communication will be sent.

·       People have been questioning whether they will get paid on June     

30th if the Government doesn’t pass the budget. Alan said he would send a message to Yoke San Reynolds requesting a need for explanation regarding future pay concerns.

 

 

Guest Speaker

 

Bob Sweeney, Senior Vice President for Development and Public Affairs:

 

Bob spoke about the Capital Campaign and what it means for UVa. Benchmarking data which compares us to other schools shows that we are in a very unique niche. As a public University, we are the 2nd smallest and as a private University, we are the 2nd largest.

 

There are three prongs on which the current capital campaign is built.  The first is the new governance system made possible by restructuring.  One outcome of this model is that we can now have more market-driven tuition.  At the same time, we want to be sure the University remains affordable and accessible to all, hence the second prong—AccessUVa.  Finally, while restructuring gives us more autonomy, it also means we are more independent financially, so we will need to create a new model of philanthropy that is much more like private institutions.  The University’s last campaign was the largest in its history, but this one is twice as large. 

 

UVa was founded by an icon of this country, Thomas Jefferson, and because of that it has a unique legacy. Jefferson created the University in partnership with the state and built on the same core values. Now we have an opportunity to grow through increased philanthropy and public support. We are trying to become even better, and to compete with the best universities in the nation, private and public.  To do that we will have to improve in many areas.  One of these is attracting and keeping the best faculty so that we can in turn attract the best undergraduate and graduate students.  Attracting and keeping the best faculty may mean that we need to increase our faculty salaries at a rate higher than other employees.

 

UVa is also unique in the kind of student it sends out into the world, and their sense of service and volunteerism.  Our alumni will be leading a public life, and we hope that we teach them to be leaders in whatever roles or communities they live and work in.  In this campaign we will focus on students as future leaders.  In addition, leaders in higher education recognize that tomorrow’s leaders need to be strong in areas of science and technology.  We will need to improve these areas at the University, and offer our students better training in them.  The Curry School and Darden School are seeking ways to improve education from grades k-12. They are also working with innovative ideas like ‘virtual labs’ for schools that cannot afford to equip and staff their own. 

 

For the campaign to be truly successful, it will need to be supported by all—alums, parents, friends, students, and staff of the University. There have been discussions of having a ‘staff campaign’ or ‘faculty campaign’. This led to discussion regarding how to get classified staff to want to contribute to the campaign, and whether the campaign will bring benefits to classified employees in much the same way as it helps students and faculty.  Classified employees shared a need for more recognition and reassurance for the work they do. Compensation was also noted as an issue. One of the strengths in the University is its workforce. In concluding, all agreed there is a need for a better explanation of how this campaign can help the classified staff. It was suggested the University conduct a comparison with other University’s classified staff to see how they compare in the key areas noted above. 

 

 

2.               New Business:

·       The May 2006 minutes were approved for the website.

·       The Provost Council set up an ad-hoc committee, which is going to research alternative fee structures for parking, and asked for volunteers. Diddy Morris and Laura Sprung volunteered to help on the committee.

·       We will be taking a tour of the University Art Museum for our July Meeting. We will try to set up a place to have our meeting prior to the tour. Our September meeting is with Leonard Sandridge and will be from 11:30am -1:00pm. The October meeting is the night of our home football game, so we may want to change our meeting to 1:00pm -2:30pm.

Laura Sprung will be talking about the L.SA.program. Nykki is working on getting Becky Campbell from University Police to speak about safety issues around grounds.

·       Once the By-Laws and representative realignment have been approved, we will work on an orientation memo for new representatives and a welcome letter for new employees about our policies and protocol.

·       Accounting Services has brown bag lunches starting in July for anyone involved with Oracle and who may be interested.

 

 

Our next meeting will be July 20th, 2006 from 1:30pm.-3:00pm. We will be touring the University Art Museum. Missy will update us on final details prior to the meeting.